SUKLEEN, MOVE OUT OF THE F*****G WAY!!

THE CASE
Long long time ago (No, I’m not Don McLean singing American Pie), the garbage guys used to pick the trash at 5 or 6 in the morning. Loudly enough to wake you up sure, but at least early enough to spare you the stops, traffic jams, stench and the sight of a turtle-lazy dude pushing trash bins like a geriatric.

Today, with the advancement of modern times, Sukleen chooses to clean the city at peak hours, ranging between 10:00 am and noon. And even better, they intentionally purchase trucks that don’t fit in our narrow streets. They leave the city clean of trash, and you of your sanity.

Why? you may ask. Humm Let’s see, we’ll try to explore the different plausible scenarios that force such a “clean-headed” organization to pollute our sanity.

SCENARIO 1
Communication is the pillar of modern days, and Sukleen, who has chosen to use its trucks as communication vehicle, was compelled to perform its task at peak hours. So, when most of us are already going insane over traffic jams generated by Lebanese whom vision of a road is a prostitute working by the hour that they have to “consume” swiftly, Sukleen fills our sight with beautiful ads that speak about a clean green environment.

Fine, but here’s the loophole morons: Your trucks run on polluting fuel. When you create traffic jams, you pollute the environment far more than stinking trash. And for God’s sake, what’s the use of a clean environment populated by drivers with nervous breakdowns?

SCENARIO 2
Sukleen is simply a sadistic organization owned by a sadist who enjoy the sight of a mile-long traffic jam halted behind a garbage truck in the narrow streets of Beirut. So, they hire foreign labor from countries where they sleep during the day and who do not speak one work of Arabic, purchase large trucks to make sure you don’t squeeze in between them and the side-walk and flee, and place more than 4 or 5 trash-collecting bins in strategically located over-crowded areas.

If this is the case, I wish they publicly admit it by changing the ads on their trucks to something like “Watch us clean your city” or “Build yourself a career, watch how we do it!”

SCENARIO 3
The garbage-collecting company is simply dumb! It happens. You may be a large organization ran by morons. I mean look at our government!! Someone must have thought that you really don’t need a PhD to run a garbage-collecting company… Sure you don’t… I rest my case.

SCENARIO 4
They simply want you to bask in the beauty of the nausea-inducing colored bins. Their super-duper marketing team philosophized that the money spent on repainting the bins using a vomit-inspired color palette should secure a return on investment. Solution: Make people slow down or stop for a time ranging between 10 and 20 minutes to appreciate the sight. It is probably the first multi-sensory advertising campaign in the country; the sight of trash, the smell of trash, the sound of trash… and the color of trash…

BOTTOM LINE
A week ago, I was driving down to Gemmayzeh coming from Tabaris. That road is already narrow enough, with cars parked on both sides leaving enough space to drive your car with your side mirrors folded. As I reach the entrance of that street, a Sukleen “large truck” makes it in front of me. As it starts to negotiate the street, it brushes two cars and comes to a complete halt when it hooks the third. And here we are, no way forward, and no way back because of cars that have already lined-up behind me. It took us half an hour to reverse all the cars back and take alternative roads.

Common sense says… Hehe. Look at me, speaking of common sense in Lebanon… Forget it. Probably the business of cleaning the streets is more important than my business in branding consultancy. I must have gotten my priorities wrong.
My one million dollar question is: Who’s going to clean the city of companies and people like that? But then again, what’s the rush?

© 2011 Ibrahim Lahoud

SUKLEEN, MOVE OUT OF THE F*****G WAY!! by Ibrahim N. Lahoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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