My husband is quite proud of the fact that he “fired” our garbage company. It is very clear in his mind that waste management was hired by us to perform a simple service to our family – pick up our garbage once a week.

After repeated problems, the final straw came when our daughter drove the can to the bottom of our rural street in her pajamas right as the garbage man was arriving. She had the can out and ready before he had even begun emptying the first of our neighbors’ cans.

Because she was embarrassed to be caught in her PJs, our daughter drove back up the hill. When we returned to retrieve the empty can – it wasn’t empty! All the other cans were, just not ours. No explanation. Did he not like the look of our daughter’s flannel pajamas?

My husband called Waste Management and probably spoke with the same nice lady that Mr. Trefethen had spoken with. She has likely been trained to say whatever it takes to get annoying people off the phone. We may think of ourselves as loyal customers, but I have no doubt that we are just annoyances to them.

I have a fantasy now as we haul our own garbage to the dump: A new company comes in and offers to pick up everyone’s garbage in a timely and cheerful manner.

They are happy to hear our feedback and ask us what they can do to make us, their customers, happy and then — they do it!

In the meantime, we have a new battle cry in our house. When a doctor makes us wait or a store doesn’t have the items they advertised, we yell, “Let’s fire them!”