My friend Steve, who’s building manager for a church that rents out space to various groups, says you can learn a lot about human nature from the way they clean up after their meetings. One could get a similar lesson from driving the streets of San Francisco this week, when everybody is putting their Christmas trees out for recycling.
ITEM: Lots of the trees are at the curb with plastic garbage bags carefully wrapped around them. What are they thinking? Who is going to take those bags off so the trees can go into the chipper?
ITEM: Lots of the trees still have Christmas tree stands firmly attached to the bottom. Again, what were they thinking? The garbage man is not your mother or your handyman who is going to unscrew or knock off those stands! (Oddly enough, there are very few trees with both bags AND stands. Apparently people are thoughless in one way or the other, but not both?)
ITEM: As you get up the hill into Pacific Heights, the trees get bigger and the discarded stands more elaborate… until you start seeing the $30 wrought iron jobs that are sold by the Guardsmen at Ft. Mason and are reusable for several years. Conspicuous consumption (or disposition) by folks whose room was likely picked up by the maid, not their mom, when they were kids.
I actually pulled over to try and claim one of these iron beauties, but it was lodged too firmly for me to remove without tools. More bad news for the garbage man. Though maybe good news for marketers, when so many can afford to throw so much so carelessly away? Happy New Year!