It’s Been A Lot

Things in the world are weird right now, so Husband and I decided to make things even weirder and sell our house.

Actually it’s something we’ve been thinking about for quite a while, and with remote work and the general state of the world, now is just a great time to finally get out of the city (not that you can really escape the metro monster that is Atlanta, but you can try). So we’ve spent the last couple weeks doing all the things you need to do when moving: junk removal, donation drop-off trips, yard work, handy work, rental-hunting, jumping through lease hoops, setting up utilities, and there’s still loads to do.

But here’s a funny thing I wanted to relate that just sort of sums up how everything has been going.

We’ll be renting this townhouse and they have certain vendors we have to use for electric, internet, you know. One of them is trash service which is a little weird, in my opinion, but any cost a corporation can pass off to the customer they will, right? Of course!

So we call to set up a waste disposal account, give them the new address, and get put on hold for, like, a reeeeally long time. When the incredibly rude woman gets back on the phone she tells us, “We’ve been told to not set set up new accounts for that area.” Then silence.

We wait, maybe there’s more explanation? Someone to be forwarded to for help? Nope. Just that what-do-you-want-me-to-do-about-it silence.

So we ask why and are told that “because of all that stuff that started in April” (which I think translates to Covid?), the company is out of new trash bins and can’t add new service as they’re overburdened. K…

I mean, this is a block of 40 townhouses where the waste disposal service is already exclusively contracted with all the other units to pick up their trash, but I guess one more is too much? And even if it weren’t, there are no new cans in the whole county anyway. The fuck?

There’s a possibility the old bins are already at the unit, so that would solve that half of the issue, but we couldn’t confirm because the property management company is closed today too. Because of course it is.

So the rude lady tells us that she just works at a call center and not the actual waste company. So we ask if we can then talk to the actual waste company because maybe there’s some confusion? Okay, she says, and “transfers” us…right back to the beginning of the phone tree that we took to get to her lazy, rude ass. Fun.

We get a second lady who is blessedly streets ahead in kindness and helpfulness, explain the situation, she looks up the community name for us, tries to resolve things, but no luck. She does, however, offer to take our info and talk to the department that handed the decision down to them. Great, we say, please do. Then we fire off an email to the property management company with whom we’ve already signed a lease that explicitly states we need accounts at these utility vendors in order to legally be able to move in (because of course it does!), and are now waiting back on a reply.

Very worst case scenario, we’re on the hook for a lease to a place we can’t live because capitalism has gone mad. Best case scenario, someone else fixes it for us. Expectation: somewhere in the middle where we can move in, but have to haul our trash to the dump on the other side of the county every week and somehow still get charged for trash collection because this is America and by god we are all free to be taken advantage of as much as possible!

Also, everything has a service fee. Everything. And it’s always monthly at $4.99 but doesn’t come with any actual service. At least our car insurance is dropping by a whopping $39 bucks!

In the grand scheme of things, no, this is not a big deal. It is, though, sort of ridiculous and could be pretty terrible, but we’re both healthy and happy despite that all the things we’re trying to organize end up having a similar (if not as nonsensical) hitch. It’s kinda funny too because I tweeted this yesterday: