An amusing incident....

TheSaint_2

Took a 6 bits of internal door and some green waste to the dump today, on arriving I saw that the council were being their usual efficient selves - the queue was out of the entrance and everyone had their engines off and were milling around chatting. Clearly they had been there for ages!

I could see in to the dump and there were only a couple of cars in there, it looked like they were moving "big stuff" around in the yard. I will never understand how our council manage to run the place so badly, even the order of the "bins" seems designed to cause the maximum congestion.

Anyway - I decided to drive in to the exit as there was nothing around and chuck my bits of wood in the skip which is next to the exit (and the green waste is next to the wood skip). There was no way i was going to wait an hour or however long. If the 4 idle workers chatting had anything about them they would have ushered a car in to the exit one at a time to drop their loads to reduce congestion.

As soon as i pulled in one of the workers bounced over to me "you can't do that - you drove in the wrong way". He was pleasant enough, and so was I "only dropping off a bit of wood mate".

I was gone within 2 minutes.
He wrote my reg down :eek: - that was the amusing bit - clearly trying to scare me.

I think its about time i wrote to the council about their badly run facility, I have been putting it off for years, but something really has to be said.

--- Now I let you all have a go because i broke the rules

staffie1

You will probably go to prison.

sillygoose

Are you crazy? you have done it now.. the pretend police (community support officers) will be around to 'verbally Tazer' you any time now. You will get some stern correspondence from the local ivory tower council HQ, The Bin Police will be alerted to check your bins for unauthorised waste (£500 fine) and you will be charged with fly-tipping. The park and recreation executive will take revenge by having a smelly dog poo bin concreted outside your front door. This will keep the by-laws committee alone in meetings for months.... is there a car parked over the road? could well be the council employed private detective snoop. You anarchist!

TheSaint_2

Ha ha ha ha - sillygoose - I know you say it in jest - but I really would not be suprised if any or all of your thoughts came to pass

At the very least i do expect a "stern" letter Which I shall ofcourse add to my pile of government stern letters that I keep to show the grandkids (when i get some!).

Good call on the unauthorised waste in the bin though - I shall ensure I am compliant because I bet they will do something like that.

arbroath_lass

TheSaint wrote: »

I could see in to the dump and there were only a couple of cars in there, it looked like they were moving "big stuff" around in the yard.

Well, if people will insist on filling the skips up they do have to be moved....

I'm sure you'll find it's Health and Safety rules not employees being jobsworths. After all no-one wants a big skip (or assorted rubbish) dropped on their car.

BTW unless you live in the same town as me I think they're all the same.

Squire_Fulwood

I had a finger severely wagged at me in my council dump. I had put an old monitor with all the other old monitors and it turned out to be the wrong place. I wonder if the person who put the first one there was wagged at.

My problem was that immediately behind the council person there was a member of the public copying every move he made. He also was wagging his finger and waving his arms about.

Have you ever tried to keep a straight face when this happens?

dickydonkin

arbroath_lass wrote: »

I'm sure you'll find it's Health and Safety 'rules' not employees being jobsworths. After all no-one wants a big skip (or assorted rubbish) dropped on their car.

I can guarantee that the public would not be allowed into the site when there is heavy traffic movents going on - that is not council staff being 'jobsworths' it is just that heavy trucks and people wandering around a site are not compatible - there will only be one winner.

That is why the council will have this safety procedure in place.

For your information regarding the jobsworths, the waste disposal industry is one of the higher risk industries where many workers and others have recently been seriously injured and killed due to being crushed site by on site plant and heavy vehicles.

As for ignoring site rules and driving into the site exit, well how clever was that?

Thankfully a forty odd ton truck didn't flatten you or your vehicle although many may suggest you deserved it!

TheSaint_2

dicky- with the greatest respect (ie none) you are an idiot.

Though I did expect the usual tirade from the usual suspects

As I said in my first post - I drove up the exit as it was completely clear - nothing around. I could clearly see where the big truck was moving stuff around, it was over on the other side of the site.

I can totally understand them not allowing cars in at the entrance, but it would have been very sensible to allow cars to enter via the exit if they were unloading things that were to go into the skips next to the exit.

Hopefully that was not too hard for you to understand

Interestingly I did not use the term jobsworth in my original post, but if the shoe fits....

TheSaint_2

On a different note when we used to live somewhere else I asked one of the local staff (standing around chatting) if they could help me to tip a very heavy sack of gravel into a skip. He did help, but he looked at me like I had two heads for asking!

I thanked him most graciously for his trouble

gravitytolls

It gets on yer wick doesn't it?

Our local tip won't allow more than one bag of rubble, one item of bathroom suite type waste, one binful of wood, one bag of landfill waste, one bag of recyclable per week. Unlimited green waste though.

Now I get that they wish to deter small builders from abusing the free facilities, but the rules are so stringent that they are to the detriment of normal households.

If I dismantle my rotting old shed, I don't much want to store the damn thing for weeks, whilst I remove it a little at a time to the tip, neither do I wish to pay for removal or for a skip, when I've already earned the use of the tip via my council tax.

I don't wish to store my bath and loo in the garden because I can only take the sink and pedestal in one week, the bath and panel the next and the loo and cistern the following week.

In a struggling economy, surely DIYer's should be encouraged?

Nilrem

The truck being on the other side of the site at that time probably has zero relevance to the shutting the site down to non staff.

If it's like my local site, that big truck will likely be moving around the site a bit from one side to the other as it shuffles full bins for the empty ones, prior to taking one of them away.
Our local site has about half accessible to the public with the bins in use, usually two each for general waste and metal, with about half the site used for storage of full bins ready to be taken away, or empty ones waiting to be swapped into use (with the truck shuffling them around when it comes to pick up/drop off).

To leave the site open whilst it is working in one area, and only that area would likely be quite time consuming and counter productive in terms of the total time taken (they would have to shut the "visitor" side down every time it moved one of the bins, which means closing the entry and waiting for those already in to leave).

Given that it's been a long bank holiday weekend for much of the past week I suspect they have a backlog of bins etc to move, thus it taking time (and by closing the site completely whilst the truck is there, they are likely able to get a lot done to make sure the rest of the weekend doesn't require shutting it down).
i suspect normally they would have tried to do the work during a quiet time, but unfortunately with half the country being on short hours for several additional days in the last 10 days, that probably wasn't an option.

Also if it's like my local site, there will always be some idiot ignoring the rules that are there to try and ensure that the site operates with some modicum of safety, be it the idiot in flip flops carrying a heavy item to the metal bin, the pillock who has a young child (despite the warnings about no children), or the guy who doesn't understand the reasons for the lanes being marked and a one way system for the cars.

it could also be that their insurance not just H&S requires the shutting of the site during any movement of the bins, especially if they have had any incidents during such movements.

P.S.
Our local tip has the ability to ban anyone from the site who breaks the rules (IE tipping stuff that isn't allowed), or endangers safety from memory - they take the plates of the offenders cars to assist in doing so (but i suspect don't do so unless it's a repeat offender.