Unclear on the Concept

From our No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department:

Is there some reason why organizations that pose as "green" – i.e., environmentally friendly – often turn out to be peopled by such pedantic pinheads?

I took a shopping bag (paper, not plastic, thank you) of 3.5-inch floppy diskettes to the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse (http://www.creativereuse.org/) this afternoon, as it happened to be not too far off my beaten path in the course of other errands. I had photographed the manager of the place for [The Big Newspaper] a couple of months back, liked the mission that they seemed to be on, and decided that, rather than feeding my unused storage media to a landfill somewhere, I would offer it to them, and see what good things might come of it.

So I was mildly annoyed when the clerk – who was one of my photographic subjects earlier in the year, but who understandably didn't recognize me months later, and without a camera hanging around my neck – asked if I was there to make a donation, then upon my assent informed me that they didn't accept donations "after 5 o'clock."

(Uh, parenthetical note to the people running EBDCR: your hours for accepting donations should be… the hours that you are open for business. Duh. Or perhaps I could waste more of my time and gasoline to come back another day and donate stuff to your stupid business. What part of "donation" didn't you people get?)

To be fair, the pretty, artificially perky clerk relented a moment later and said that she'd accept my donation, because, after all, it was only one paper shopping bag's worth. She was still attending to another customer, so I stood off to one side and waited.

It was at this point that some other male, 20-something clerk who apparently works as an extra in a Beat Generation coffeehouse, complete with gray herringbone vest, fedora and scraggly goatee, approached from the back of the shop, and deigned to be of service.

The ensuing dialogue went something like this:

Kerouac-ite: Have you been helped?

Me: Yeah, I'm here to make a donation.

Perky Clerk: So what are you donating?

Me: Floppy diskettes.

Perky Clerk: I'm sorry, but we don't accept floppy diskettes.

Kerouac-ite: I really don't believe in floppy diskettes. We don't want something that will just sit here. And besides, we don't accept donations after 5.

Excuse me, you Luddite, you "don't believe" in floppy diskettes? Tell you what: why don't you e-mail that thought to 1998, when I might have cared? I had no idea that your shop had an ideology regarding what it would accept. They're floppy disks, not a lifestyle choice. And besides, the whole reason I'm here is to make sure that they don't end up in a landfill somewhere, and your part of the bargain is that you figure out a way to "creatively re-use" them. Maybe they'd make great ceiling tiles, or drink coasters, I don't know. Go outside and read the sign on the side of the building, jackass! It seems to me that you're abdicating your responsibility to a place that claims to keep things from going to waste.

What's more, I'm pretty sure I came here to make a donation to your second-hand store, buddy, not listen to your smug value judgments about computer components that were popular when you were still in kindergarten. Oh, I'm sorry – next time I'll only come in with my cloud storage, okay? By the way, I don't have an iPhone – can I still stand in the same room with you, Mr. Cool Guy?

Oh and – just wondering – do you guys accept donations after 5?

As I walked back to the car, shopping bag still cradled in my arms, I silently made a vow to never return there for any reason.

Again, to be fair, the perky clerk offered to give me a list of e-waste recyclers, so at least she wasn't a complete waste of skin. But the other guy…

The positive aspect of it all is that it made me so angry that I actually had to sit down and write something about it. I hope you're happy.