That you would read a story of this nature in a Seattle newspaper is if the editor wanted to mock the person confused over the cans.
A council refused to collect rubbish from a 95-year-old war veteran who is nearly blind – because he put a ketchup bottle in the wrong bin.
Lenny Woodward, a former Desert Rat who has lived in the same house for 58 years, was confused by a new regime of fortnightly collections and rigid recycling rules.
Residents have a blue wheelie bin for cans and cardboard, a green box for glass and a black bin for other waste.
Mr Woodward made the mistake of putting the ketchup bottle and a coffee jar in the blue bin when they should have gone in the green box.
When binmen inspected the blue bin, they refused to empty it and attached a tag to it warning him not to break the rules again.
And when his daughter rang Norwich City Council to explain that he was baffled by the new regime, she was told that “rules have to be obeyed”.
I’m already waiting for the first round of confusion over the new foodwaste rules. Rules that lead to fines for not putting your chicken bones and apple cores in your yardwaste bin.
Though, even if my employer took those calls, my bosses aren’t dumb enough to have me answering them. I have no time to waste telling people about some ignorant rule a bureaucrat pulled out of his ass.
The city itself takes those calls and I know for a fact that their highly qualified representatives will issue forth with their own version of the “rules have to be obeyed†line.