If you got up this morning and wondered, “Gee, is the city of Charlotte picking up garbage today?” you might have gone to the Charmeck.org Web site to find out.

There you would have found this page and the following info:

January 2007

* January 1, 2007 – Solid Waste Services will observe the New Year holiday. Crews will provide service on a one-day delay, with Friday customers receiving collection on Saturday.

Whew! No need to rush around and pick up from last night’s New Year’s Eve party. Coffee it is then. But soon you hear a rumble in the distance. Next, a frantic cell phone call, “The garbage is coming! They are right down the street!”

Quick! Scurry, run, stumble, sort, bin, tie! Tie! Push, roll, stumble-mud, roll, pant — bastards! Lift, crash-carry, bin-bash, stack, stumble, grumble, McCrory, lift, dump, sort! Lift, run, stack, lift, run, stack. Repeat. Smash down. Smash. Down. Breathe.

After that experience you might have enough sense left to wonder what you got wrong. If so, you go back the Charmeck.org Web site to find this page and the following info:

January 2007

* January 1, 2007 – Solid Waste Services will not observe New Year’s day as a holiday. Crews will provide service on schedule the week of January 1, 2007.

Emphasis in the original, BTW. In sum, at some time between 8am and 11am -ish, the Charmeck.org page was changed to lose the bad info. I have to assume this only happened after some startled citizen sent an email or called with the quite surprising news that garbage trucks were indeed rolling in Charlotte on New Year’s Day.

Afterall, the no-pickup info had only been out all year in 2006.

I think they hate us. They really do.