Not for the first time our recyclage men have not taken the Christmas money I’ve left out for them.
They come before dawn, so I have to find a way to make sure they see the envelope with their money in it. And also, leave it in such a way that they can handle it through their thick gloves. So this year I made a plastic pouch and slid the envelope in it, taped the pouch with one side still open on top of our yellow lid bin, trailed gold ribbon all over it and tucked a pair of scissors alongside. The scissors have gone, the rest (including the money) is still there.
You would think after 18 years (a) they would know we always give a Christmas box and (b) I would have worked out a fool proof way to make sure that they always see it, even in the dark.
I wouldn’t tip the rubbish collection service in the Dordogne in washers or any other useless currency because the so-called service is putting it politely, rubbish.
It’s them who should tip the householder for carting rubbish from home to a central collection point.
If you have the misfortune of having a waste service called SMD3 I feel sure you will agree.
On the other hand our factrice/post lady is brilliant and we always tip her well.
Is it possible that they are simply not permitted to accept gifts? In the UK, many outsourced rubbish collection contracts (often ironically with French providers such as Veolia) prohibit the acceptance of tips and gifts, partly as an anti-corruption measure, and also to prevent householders being pressured for money by bin collectors. I don’t know if the same approach applies in France..?
That said, I suspect that even if there are such clauses in contracts, I’m sure multiple blind eyes are turned to ignore the rules, especially at Christmas!
As our lane is not accessible to anything larger than a Trafic - that with millimetric care - we have to cart our yellow bags, issued by the Mairie, to a point where the lane is wide enough for the rubbish truck to get at them from the other end - the corner of a grassy patch in some foreign …
When I dropped off my bag last week I saw that all the bags, yellow from the Mairie or otherwise, had 'collecte des ordures non admissible’ stickers on them. Back home, I checked that the bag I used was one from the two rolls I’d been given by reception at the Marie when I ran out of the first issue. They were. What gives?
There are bags dumped that are clearly not the council issue - usually black bags that people want to use up or simply have not bothered to get the official ones. These sit about in heaps for several weeks, with stickers on them, until they are, inevitably, picked up.
There are parts of Vire that are, from time to time, looking like the road I lived on in Bristol. There was a system of bins and crates for different categories of waste. Residents did the sorting. Cardboard had to be bundled up without a bag or crate.
The Somali families living on the road understood this to mean that all their rubbish could just be piled up on the pavement …
It may be a complete coincidence, but it appears that earlier this year, the Agence Française Anti-corruption (AFA) has issued new detailed guidelines to local governments “on managing integrity risks. These guidelines emphasize the importance of preventing corruption, favoritism, and undue influence in public service contracts. Many public entities adopt internal policies that explicitly ban or restrict the acceptance of gifts, tips, or hospitality by public servants and contractors.”
The first year we were here it meant leaving bin bags out for collection. Christmas arrived and I offered a tip to the binmen to be told in no uncertain terms “not allowed” . Now it’s the large communal bins so no house to house collections.
Maybe this not accepting gifts while working in public services is indeed a thing. Pompier’s allowed to ‘sell’ calendars by special dispensation and hospital staff do appreciate a box of choccies.
We take a Christmas gift of bonbons made by our lovely local nougaterie to thank the Mairie staff. The bin men I’m afraid we do not see because we don’t have wheelie bins but use the village containers.
For the last few years, since we had new bin collection service, have always left tips for the binmen. I used to put the tip, inside a Christmas card, then put the card in a large clear plastic bag, twisted the top half of the bag round and round, and then used a clothes peg to attach the plastic bag scrunched ends to the handle of the bin. I used to put in a small bag of chocs as well to weight the bag down -
and the bag always disappeared.
As I’m not in France at the moment can’t say whether the binmen would still collect their tip - but they always have done in previous years. (Used to give them 2 small bags of mini choc-eggs at Easter as well…….- don’t know why but always did so !!).
I should probably start doing something similar for our bin men, as they’re good and also to keep them sweet.
Our town is divided into 2 zones, and the week the black bins (i.e. household waste) are collected varies by zone. Found out the other day that our new place is literally on the border for the 2 zones, so depending upon which side of the road I put the bins on, we’ll have weekly collections instead of fortnightly
