Government Efficiency

Whenever I decide to sell my house, I guess I get to sell it as a 2.75 bath instead of a 2.5.  That’s because about a month and a half ago Atlanta brought me an early Christmas present in the form of a porta-potty for my lawn.  And at this point, I guess it’s here to stay.

You have no idea how happy I was to see the thing arrive. A couple of months back Atlanta had some flooding. Some fairly serious flooding. And one of the casualties of that flooding was a big water pipe at my curb.

Emergency services hustled out and dug up the pipe, leaving behind what Mark and I have come to call, affectionately enough, the Hole. The Hole was vast and impressive, and seemed destined to be a permanent feature of our landscape.

It’s not that the city government wasn’t concerned. A few days after the flooding, a pair of orange cones appeared flanking the Hole. About another week later, the Hole was strewn all about with plastic orange fencing. A month after that, a missive arrived requesting our permission for city workers to enter our property in order to fix the Hole.

We signed the form and sent it back with enthusiasm. About a month after that, the workers arrived, porta-potty in tow, and began the various and sundry tasks associated with filling in the Hole.

So far their usual M.O. is to work about six hours, then leave for a week.  Although their last visit was on December 23rd, so we’ve just hit the three mark week.  The rest of the time they leave the digger there for the neighborhood boys to admire, which is a lovely public service.

Now, I don’t mean to sound too sour about it.  I am happy that the Hole is getting fixed.  And I have faith that eventually the digger and porta-potty will return from whence they came.  It just kind of boggles my mind that they can leave what must be a fifty thousand dollar vehicle sitting around on my lawn for three weeks.  I mean, don’t they need it for anything?