Shredding Sitings

I will update here (when I remember) with sitings of the shredding vans.

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Seeing (sh)red

Being a GOM (grumpy old man), I've started to develop GOM tendencies (GOMts). GOMts manifest themselves in a number of ways. However, by far my biggest GOMt (or at least my GOMt plat du jour, if you will) is my rage at shredding vans whose noise pollutes The Square. And my head.
So what's my gripe? It's pretty simple. I have windows next to my desk on The Square. They allow me to look out on The Square. During summer I can open my window and breathe in the air. Or I could if it wasn’t for the barking noise of a shredding van tearing up another sack-full of legal documents.

The vans sit there for at least an hour at a time grinding paper into streams of A4 slivers. Do it somewhere else you morons. Not outside my window. I have work to do and I cannot hear myself think.

By way of example, here’s a story. This is true. It really happened. I called one of these companies to complain when one of their trucks was busy a-shredding outside my window. I dunno, for the sake of argument, let’s call them Shred It (http://www.shredit.com/ 0800 028 1164). So the woman picks up the phone:

Shred It Operator: “Hello, good morning Shred It. Can I help you?”

Me: “I’m ringing about one of your vans which is outside…”

Shred It Operator: “Hello, Shred It. Can I help you?”

Me: “Yes, I’m ringing about…”

Shred It Operator: “…sorry, can you speak up, I can’t hear you.”

Me (shouting): “YOUR VANS ARE OUTSIDE MY OFFICE AND WE CAN’T MAKE TELEPHONE CALLS BECAUSE OF THE NOISE.”

[Line goes dead.]

And the trucks arrive about once a week. And to make matters worse they either park on double-yellows or park in the car park spaces and they don’t pay and display. But don’t get me started on that.

The Chimp

Noise polluters: