Rant #2,430: One Hundred Bottles of Beer On the Wall

Our lives have changed drastically due to the presence of the coronavirus.

Every facet of our lives is different, and we might never go back to the old ways again.

Things are just so different now. And we are adapting to these changes each and every day, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

But one thing has not changed.

We have bottles to be recycled, and we have plenty of them.

What are we to do?

Over the past two and a half months, my bottle collection has multiplied by about nine times, meaning that all the bottles that I would put in a bag to eventually recycle had to sit in my garage, just waiting for the moment that New York State actually allowed me to bring them to a supermarket's recycling area to cash them in.

When the pandemic hit, I already had three bags in the trunk of my car ready to go, and right as the state closed down these recycling areas, I found one lone machine that worked, and I was able to cash in about 25 of the more than 100 bottles--really plastic water and seltzer bottles, soft drink cans, and glass beer bottles--in those bags.

And then, that was it for many weeks.

In the meantime, my family continued to drink water and seltzer, we had a can here or there work itself into the mix, and my wife would have an occasional beer, so the cans were accumulating as fast as they normally would.

The problem was that we could not get our five cents back on each by cashing them in, so having nowhere else to go with them, I kept them in bags in the garage, and at one point, we had about nine full bags, not counting the bags that we were filling in the house.

Then, a few weeks ago, and I might add, a few weeks before Governor Cuomo gave the go ahead for these recycling areas to reopen, word through the local grapevine was that one supermarket had opened its recycling area early, in opposition to the governor's wishes.

I also read that people were taking trips to this one supermarket simply to turn in their bottles, and the place had turned into a mob scene, but at least one where people were social distancing and wearing masks while getting their nickel back on each bottle recycled.

I told my wife about it, and I also told her that I would wait, because I was not going to go there at 6 a.m. in the morning to turn in my bottles--heck, I have other things to do, including writing this Rant and endlessly looking for jobs, so I decided to stay away.

But the bottles continued to accumulate in the garage.

Then, about a month ago, the governor evidently lifted the ban on these recycling areas, and as you could imagine, people came in droves to cash in their bottles, including me.

At first, it was pretty easy, because most people with bottles to cash in didn't know the ban was lifted, so it was pretty easy to cash in three bags at a time with no worries, other than the machines breaking down, which they do, and do often.

New rules had been put in place by the supermarkets related to these areas, and in the recycling area I use, the machines would now only be attended to once an hour, so if the machine broke down at, let's say, 9:35 a.m., no one would come to fix it until 10 a.m., which was a nuisance, but it was doable.

Limits on the number of bottles you could bring in were also more firmly established. There had always been limits--like 150 bottles in one visit--but the limits were never really implemented. You had your bottles, you turned them in. But with people accumulating hundreds--and some thousands--of bottles during the ban, limits had to be more firmly set and enforced, and the place I use set it at 240 bottles during a single visit, or $12 maximum that you could get back during that one visit.

That all seemed to make sense, but as you would assume, some people do not follow the rules, and were bringing in not hundreds of bottles at a time, but thousands of bottles to recycle during a single visit, hogging the few machines that each supermarket has, clogging the machines up and forcing them to fill up and break down at an alarming rate.

Case in point was yesterday.

I have been bringing in about three bags at a time during the reopening of this procedure, so I am bringing in about 140 bottles to be recycled, way below the 240 bottles maximum that is prominently posted on the door of the recycling bin.

So I get to the recycling area yesterday, and two groups of people are using the machines, and they have not only carts and carts of bottles in the area--this one is enclosed, many are not--but they also have van fulls of even more bottles, so we are talking about these two groups of people--one supposed husband and wife, and a father and his son--having literally thousands and thousands of bottles to recycle.

When I realized what was going on--and that at this rate, I would not get into the recycling area to get rid of my bottles until Christmas--I contacted store management on the intercom in the recycling area, and I complained to store management that people were breaking the rules and hogging the machines.

The wife of the first duo of recyclers heard me do this, as the intercom was right behind her. She was an Asian woman, and she said in clipped English, "OK, done," but I looked at her machine, and it wasn't working anymore because she had filled the machine with hundreds of bottles.

She moved out, but her husband was working on another machine, not stopping, and I told him in no uncertain terms that he was abusing the privilege, and when someone from the store came down to presumably clean the place down, I told them about these two people, who had since walked back to their van, parked illegally right outside the recycling area, and from a distance, you could see that they still had thousands of bottles in bags sticking out of the back of their van.

The father of the father and son duo told me that they didn't understand English and that is why they were taking advantage, but I promptly told him that that was hogwash, because they skeedaddled out of there pretty quickly when I made my call on the intercom.

And yes, the father and son team were also recycling thousands of bottles at a time.

The worker who came to the recycling area to disinfect the place and fix the machines said he was only a worker there, and that I had to voice my opinion to the store manager, which I did after I cashed in my bottles.

I walked into the supermarket with my receipts in my hand--no more change, you get receipts now, which is as much a safety thing for the store as well as a psychological thing, as you have to go into the store to cash in the receipts, and presumably, you are in the store, so you will make a purchase with your earnings--and I went directly to the customer service area, looking to cash the receipts in and make my complaint to the store manager.

I had my receipts over to someone behind the desk, who promptly told me that he could only give me a maximum $12 back at one visit. I then just as promptly told him that I had nowhere near $12 in receipts--I had less than $8 in receipts--and that I needed to speak to the manager, as I was the one who was making the complaints about the misuse of the machines.

After a few minutes, the manager came over, I told him what was happening, and he said he would take care of it. I told him that this has been going on even before the coronavirus hit us, and that it continues unabated now that we can cash in the bottles.

He repeated himself over and over and over. My reply? "Yup." I knew he was paying me lip service. This problem is as low on his totem pole of problems as possible, and he will listen to me, but that is all he is going to do.

The rules are plainly stated on the door of the recycling area. What more can the store do to police this area? They can't waste manpower by having an employee stand at the door making sure everything is copacetic with the rules.

I was almost hoping he would say that, and my reply to him would be, "Heck, I have nothing to do, Sign me up now, pay me minimum wage, and I will do that job for you," but he never did.

So right now, I have three more bags in the garage, and one rapidly filling up in the house.

Am I going to have to go through this nonsense again and again and again.

Let's see what happens next week, same Bat time, same Bat channel.