I’m sure you’ve lived in a place before, and that the place where you lived had garbage service. There are some rules to how the garbage works, but as long as you follow a few simple rules, you can get rid of anything short of a couch or refrigerator, but not at Heatherwood Apartments, unless you’re willing to take a risk or two.
You obviously can’t take a piece of furniture and put it out by the dumpsters. My movers tried that with an end-table that was broken and no longer needed. It was small enough to fit in the mega-compactor, but as a piece of constructed furniture, I understood why they wouldn’t want it in there.
Mind you, the garbage company has no problem with these items, they just don’t want them in the compactor because they tend not to crush very well. After I learned about the problem, I asked if it would be alright to break the item down and dispose of it in that way, and they told me the answer was absolutely no.
The next day, however, I was taking out a bag of kitchen garbage when I found an entire entertainment center sitting beside the dumpster. I found this to be quite strange, and thought I’d bring it to the attention of management, but just a few hours later, after the trash had been picked up, I discovered the entertainment center was gone.
Where did it go?
Maybe the garbage men took it. Maybe maintenance broke it down and put it in the dumpster. Maybe management paid maintenance to deliver it to the transfer station… though that doesn’t sound wholly likely, does it?
In any case, this piece of garbage was removed, and it was done without any repercussion to the previous owner who had dumped it. Meanwhile, my small, broken coffee table had to be professionally moved to my new house so I could then pay to dump it from there. I imagine I paid more to get rid of it than I did to get it in the first place, when you count paying a man to move it to the dumpster, back to the apartment, in to the moving truck, across town, back out of the moving truck, and then put it in my new garbage can.
Apartment renters rarely own trucks or other high-capacity vehicles, so if we can’t dump our garbage in the place where we live (as is legally required, if you check out the utility mandates according to refuse handlers), then how are we supposed to deal with such items?
The answer, apparently (and I’ll swear this until I’m told a better solution) is to only dump them in the garbage area after dark when management’s watchful eyes are closed and sleeping on their plush, cushy pillows.