Sunday September 10th, 2017

The exercise:

Write about: lobsters.

The below was one side of my morning. On the other was blue skies and sunshine. Each had their moments, though the below won out pretty much every time I was at the main beach today.

Back to starting at 7 tomorrow morning. With the long weekend during my last shift, I've started at 6 for my last five work days (I work 6 to 5 on weekends, 7 to 6 during the week). Ready for that extra hour of sleep.

Mine:

One of the local groups had their annual Lobster on the Beach fundraiser last night. Lobsters were flown in from Atlantic Canada, tents were set up in the park next to the main beach (right next to the washrooms, which had me a little concerned about how they would be this morning... but they were fine). It ran from 6 pm until 1 am and was sold out (I think I saw somewhere that there were 150 tickets).

Anyway. I'm sure it was a lovely event and yadda yadda yadda blah blah whatever.

My problem with it? When I showed up to clean the washrooms this morning there was a pile of about twenty garbage bags waiting for me.

That stunk of lobster.

And a lot of them were ripped and leaking.

Normally I'd leave something like that for whoever is doing the town garbage run that day, but now that we're past the busy season they've stopped doing runs on the weekend. And I wasn't about to let that sit there until tomorrow morning, especially with the sun going to be on it by early afternoon.

So I got half the bags on my truck (dripping I don't want to know what all over it), cleaned the washrooms, and drove to the nearest town dumpster and got rid of them. Then I came back to get the rest.

At this point I was already pretty pissed off. I knew the truck was going to stink like lobster for the rest of the day (at best). And I didn't really think it should have been left up to me to take their garbage away (I wasn't told it would be at any rate).

When I got back there was a crew working on packing up the tables and chairs and tents and cleaning up whatever was left to clean up. I will gladly admit to glaring at anyone in sight. Then a guy came over to add another bag to the pile.

"Sorry, I tried not to make too big a mess for you guys."

Guys? It's just me.

"Yeah," I said, without really looking at him, "the bags ripped."

"Well, there's whole lobsters."

I think I probably glared at him at this point as he walked away.

The event is called Lobsters on the Beach. Of f'n course there are whole lobsters. What were you expecting to be throwing away? Moose carcasses? Why would you not (at least) double bag that stuff? Or better yet, I don't know, maybe use heavy duty bags?

At the very minimum maybe don't stuff them so full that a) I hurt my back lifting them into the truck, and b) the bags are tearing apart because they cannot support that much weight.

Anyway. Dumped the second load. Hosed out the back of the truck. Mopped the back of the truck. Sprayed odor destroyer on the back of the truck.

Could still smell lobster in the back of the truck.

I did not return to the main beach until I was absolutely certain they would be done packing up and be long gone. No good would have come of me seeing them again.