I live in a pretty nice town. We pay high taxes and because of that we enjoy a lot of nice amenities like good schools, lots of parks, very few potholes and more.
This week I started realizing I pay
way too much in taxes. In one day I witnessed the following shitty examples of my tax dollars at work:
I drove my daughter to her school and when I pulled into the neighborhood by her school I noticed 2 police cars pulled over to the curb. I wondered what the deal was. It's a pretty busy street during drop off and pick up and I thought maybe they were setting up a speed trap or something. I slowed down to the speed limit (no sense being made the example for the rest of the swagger wagons coming through behind me) and proceeded with extreme caution to the school.
I dropped off my daughter and headed back home. I remembered the speed trap and slowed down to a crawl as I came up to where I'd last seen the police officers. The police cars were now parked and there were 2 police officers walking along the sidewalk.
Ooooh, manhunt!, I thought.
Now it's getting exciting. Maybe there's a bank robber on the run or something like that.
Being the nosybody that I am, I practically stopped to watch where they were going. They walked up the sidewalk and stopped by a small pear tree that was the apparent victim of a heartless hit and run. The tree was snapped at the base and lying there dying. The first officer walked all the way around the tree, giving it little kicks here and there, taking notes while the second one took photos from every imaginable angle.
Are you kidding me with this shit?
First of all, who in their right mind thought for a second, "Someone ran over my tree! 9! 1! 1!"????
Who does that? People who name their kids
Londyn, that's who.
"Umm, hello? Police?"
"Yes, ma'am, what is your emergency?"
"Yes, it's a big one! Someone ran over my pear tree! It's dead! It's dead!"
"Wait a minute, slow down ma'am I can barely understand you. Who is dead? Are you sure they're dead?"
"I'm positive! My tree is broken in half. It could not have survived!"
"Did you take a pulse - Wait a minute. Did you say a
tree???!"
"Yes. My pear tree. That tree was like $200 and someone just ran it over. I need an officer here now. There needs to be an investigation. I
will be pressing charges!"
"Yeah, uh, OK. Fine. We'll send someone out in the next few days. Bye."
Then, how sad and pathetic it must be for the cop who gets
that call!
"Alright, everybody listen up. It's time to hand out assignments for today. Carter and McMillan, you get the robbery on the west side of town, Johnson and Phillips, you guys check out the missing person reports. Let's see what else? Oh yeah, Fisher and Burgess, you guys head over to that fancy pants neighborhood with the hit and run."
"Ooh, a hit and run, Chief?"
"Yeah, don't get too excited. It's a tree. Lady says it's pretty expensive - we all know that's bullshit - but she's a real pain in the ass so take lots of photos and a full report. Make it look convincing. You can shred it when you get back and take a long lunch."
I'm pretty sure when these men signed up for the police academy they dreamed of helping people, saving lives, taking down bad ass criminals and shooting a gun every day. They never dreamed of finding the minivan that ran over a stupid tree.
And who in the world thought it would be a good idea to send out TWO cops for this travesty? What a waste of resources. And they couldn't ride together? They each needed a car?? WTF??
I guess I should be happy that I live in a town with such a low crime rate that they've got two cops available for a hit and run to a tree.
After I passed the police officers doing their very important and time consuming work, I headed over to the local library to return some books.
My library is a beautiful building very close to my home. I think it's only about 10 years old and every time I turn around they are doing something to update it. This summer it was new concrete at the front the entrance. I can't tell you what was wrong with the old, but obviously someone was highly offended by a crack or a divet that I couldn't see and so it was replaced with brand spanking new concrete.
The building is currently being remodeled because we are some serious lazy ass people - myself included. Our library has this great little system where you can go online and reserve a book and then a librarian pulls the book for you and puts it on the hold shelf. You get an alert when your book is on the shelf and you can go and pick it up. I do this all the time. I never go to the library and look up a book in the catalog and then actually navigate through that bastard Dewey's Decimal system to find said book. I just point and click and wait for the librarian to do the work for me.
Now, this is where I draw the line. I do actually drive to the library (it's too far to walk) and park my car and
walk into the building to get my reserves from the shelf. For those lazier library goers there is a drive up window where you can pull up and a librarian will get your holds for you.
They are remodeling the library because the drive up window makes this location is the most popular for holds and they have run out of space to house all the hold items. We have libraries all over the county but people will drive miles out of their way just so they don't have to get out of the car to get their copy of
Bossypants (seriously funny book, BTW)?! Yup. It's the McDonalds of the library world. Pretty soon they'll be able to offer you a large mocha frappe with your
Complete Works of Shakespeare.
What irritates me is this is the same library that had to cut their hours recently because of budget cuts.
This is also the same library where I overhead this conversation that day:
"I've lost my book and I need to pay for it," says the library card holder.
"OK, let's see. It's $12.00," says the wimpy librarian (why do librarians constantly live up to their stereotypes??).
"Here you go," she hands him the money.
"Great. Umm....wow, this is your third lost book."
"Yeah, I have a hard time keeping track of them. And one was actually wrecked, it fell in a pool. You guys just wouldn't take it back in that condition."
"Oh. Yeah, water is pretty hard on books. So...OK, it looks like you've got some other fines accumulating. Did you want to pay those now....or...."
"Well, how much are they?"
"You've got two books that are overdue. One is at $3.60 and the other is at $5.40."
"Yeah, I don't have that much with me right now. Plus, I think that one - the $5.40 one - is lost too. I've looked everywhere for it and I can't find it. I've got one more place to look though."
"Oh, well, you're almost maxed out."
"Maxed out?"
"Yeah, did you know that fines only go to a $6.00 maximum?"
"Wait, do you mean you can only charge me $6.00 total?"
"Yes. And then it just holds until you pay it."
"Does it affect my ability to check out books?"
"Only if it becomes a real problem." (At what point does it become a real problem, jackhole?? Three lost books - excuse me -
two lost books and one destroyed book sounds like a problem to me.)
Now her wheels are spinning. "Soooo....if I had just not reported that book lost, I would have been fined $6.00 and then it would be done?"
"Well, yes....I guess. I mean, but the book was
lost."
"Right, but you don't know that unless I
tell you."
"Yes, I guess so...," now the genius librarian has realized he's let the cat out of the bag. Now he sees where she's going and he can't stop her. He starts to turn red with...anger? No, I think it's simple embarrassment at how stupid he is.
"OK, so then in two more days, I'll reach $6.00 and I'll max out. So I'll just call that one overdue. I'll say I'm still reading it. I'll bring back the other one, I know where it is."
"Well, yeah, I guess that would work..."
"Perfect! That's what I'll do then. Great. Thanks very much!" And she's off to lose even more books.
What a couple of douches.
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