Six Phone Calls for a Trash Can
All I wanted was a price quote for a dumpster. Six phone calls, one disconnected transfer, a form that doesn't exist, and a 73-second answer from City Hall later — I have a story instead.
Who knew it would be such a complicated time… for trash.
Here's the situation. My house sits on a steep hill. That's charming in the summer and a genuine hazard in the winter, when hauling garbage cans down an icy slope becomes less "chore" and more "extreme sport." My neighbor has a small dumpster — the kind a truck can service right from the alley — and for a while I've been using it with his blessing. But the account is his, the bill is in his name, and it was time to be a grown-up and get my own.
Simple, right? Call the trash company, get a price, done by lunch.
The trash company is a big regional outfit that bought our local hauler a while back. What follows is my week of trying to give them money.
Attempt one: two phone calls, forty-plus minutes on hold each. I hung up both times. The trash remained theoretical.
Attempt two: I emailed them like a civilized person. No reply. I also called, waited on hold for an hour and a half — ninety minutes! — and finally pressed 1 for the callback option, the one where they keep your place in line and ring you back. They never called back. My place in line is presumably still being held. Archaeologists will find it someday.
Attempt three was today, and today I brought backup: my assistant Arlo, who can make business calls on my behalf. (Yes, that's a thing now. No, I will not be returning to holding my own phone.) Six calls. SIX. Here's the highlight reel:
Call 1: The hold system took a callback number, then cheerfully read back a completely different phone number — in a different state. Arlo corrected it. A representative named Kendall finally answered… and the call ended the second he introduced himself and said the word "quote."
Call 2: Kendall again! Same introduction. Same cliffhanger ending. Kendall has now hung up on my assistant twice, which is either a policy or a personal brand.
Call 3, the national line: A lovely man named Leo explained that quotes go through a "residential setup team," offered to email me a form, and transferred us — to a disconnected number. Inside their own company. Their phone system transferred us to a number that does not exist.
Call 4, City Hall: A clerk answered, said "Hello?", discovered she couldn't hear anything, and the call ended. Thirty-four seconds.
Call 5, City Hall again: And here, friends, is where the entire saga turned. A clerk named Ariel answered a simple question — who is licensed to haul trash in town? — and gave a simple answer in seventy-three seconds flat: two companies are licensed to haul trash in this town. The one I'd been fighting all week… and a second hauler I'd never tried. She even gave me the number. Seventy-three seconds, after a week of phone-tree purgatory. I could have cried. Somebody promote Ariel.
Call 6, back to the national line to accept Leo's email form: A representative named Grace informed us that there is no form. Leo said there's a form; Grace said there's no form; the form both exists and doesn't exist, like Schrödinger's paperwork. Grace also explained that the company doesn't rent dumpsters to residential customers — regular garbage cans only — and then gave us a number for local rates. The number was the local office. The one that hung up on us twice. The snake had eaten its own tail.
Somewhere in the middle of call 6, by the way, we were also briefly helped by a company representative named… Tophy. No relation. I choose to believe the universe was just showing off at that point.
Now, about Grace's "no residential dumpsters" claim — my neighbor HAS one, billed to him personally, so how does that work? Best theory: his dumpster is set up under some other category of account that just happens to bill a regular human being. The company's own phone menu tucks dumpsters under a whole different department, so "we don't do that" seems to depend heavily on which door you knock on. Which means the question for tomorrow isn't "do you sell this?" It's "my neighbor has one — how is HIS set up, and can I have that?" Much harder to hand-wave away.
So here's where things stand: quotes obtained, zero. Licensed haulers identified, two. Dignity, mostly intact. Tomorrow morning, Arlo makes call number seven — to the other licensed hauler, a regional outfit that got bought by an even bigger company a few years back and might answer the phone under a completely different name. (Corporate consolidation is a hell of a drug.) Same mission: quote only, no contract yet — and if they also claim dumpsters aren't for houses, we ask the magic question: then how does the one next door exist?
All I want is to pay a company to take my trash away from an alley so I don't die on an icy hill this winter. Surely, SURELY, that is a service that exists in America.
To be continued. Pray for Kendall.