One of The Pony's "duties," (for which he receives a weekly salary of $20) is to bring six-packs of bottled Diet Coke down to the basement. His job description also includes taking out the trash, rolling the dumpster to the end of the driveway on Tuesday night, and bringing it back (hopefully before the next Tuesday night), doing the weekly shopping at The Devil's Playground, carrying in (I mean it!) the groceries I get at Save A Lot or Country Mart, cleaning his own bathroom, plus the triangle tub, fetching me items during the cooking of the nightly suppers, and assisting Farmer H with odd jobs.
Okay. That's not really his salary. It's the allowance he has gotten while living at home, since he was in high school. Sure beats MY childhood allowance of 50 cents every two weeks!
Anyhoo... sometimes The Pony needs a supervisor. I threaten him with a job target and docking of his pay. For instance, The Pony thought he was doing me a favor by putting the Diet Cokes in the mini fridge under the basement stairs. It's not part of his duties. I usually do it myself. Problem is, The Pony is a lot like Farmer H. Every time he "helps" me, he creates extra work, or endangers my life (pretty sure on purpose, in Farmer H's case).
As I walked from my lair to the main basement area, for my OPC (Old People Chair) and TV, my foot caught on something. Thank the Gummi Mary, I didn't go down. What a nightmare THAT would have been, flashback to the time I tripped on the throw rug and had to crawl to the couch to hoist myself up. When I investigated, I saw that The Pony had simply dropped the plastic soda ring thingy to the tile floor!
WHO DOES THAT!
Seriously. What kind of bum or hoarder just drops trash where they stand? I have a trash bag in my office. There's a plastic bag hanging by my OPC. There's a wastebasket in the NASCAR bathroom. There's even a collection of previous plastic soda ring thingies on the end of Genius's old desk, beside the stairs. That's where I lay them, and harvest them every few weeks to stuff in the trash bag. I'd NEVER think of dropping one to the floor!
I broached the subject with The Pony.
"I can't believe you left the soda ring on the floor! I could have fallen! I stepped on it the other night, and it startled me. I'm not steady on my feet on a flat tile floor. That's dangerous."
Not sure if The Pony was picking up what I was laying down, which was pretty much the point that he should be picking up those plastic soda ring thingies that he had laid down! In fact, I found ANOTHER one in the same general area, the next time The Pony brought down Diet Coke.
Believe me, a stern talking-to, and a command to pick them up, were on my agenda. Funny thing. The very night I had penciled-in our conference, I saw that the soda ring thingies had been picked up before I left my lair.
It's just a coincidence that it was the evening The Pony had not helped me carry in the groceries, and had felt my wrath a few hours before.
4 comments:
And does The Pony cut apart the rings, so the circles cannot strangle a sea creature?
If the rings and hole were cut apart, your delicate Croc'ed foot might not get ensnared in the plastic ring-thingy, so it would help your survival as well as the survival of sea turtles.
Sioux,
No. The Pony doesn't really care about helping sea creatures. Not even his old middle-school math teacher, my next-door buddy in Lower Basementia one year, who was called SeaHag by another faculty member... should she wander into our Mansion basement by mistake.
I wish you hadn't mentioned sea turtles, because that makes me worry that I might fall down and get stuck on my back, unable to roll over or stand up!
Those rings don't go out in the trash here, they go to the recycling centres and sold on to people or companies who make things from the plastic. A lot of children's playground furniture and safety matting here in Aus. is now made from recycled plastics and some new soft toys are stuffed with beans made from recycled plastic bottles.
River,
That is a scathingly brilliant idea! I haven't heard of them being recycled here, but some recycling has been curtailed in Hillmomba. Maybe it's different in the big cities.
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