Adventures in Dumpster Rentals

Securing the most sought-after commodity in a post-flood enivornment.

A good person to be in the event of a natural disaster is the owner of a dumpster rental company.

When Mother Nature loses her shit, she makes quite the mess. And the only way to get rid of said mess is with a commericial dumpster, preferably one that’s at least 20 yards in length. Of course, when everybody’s got a huge mess to get rid of, everybody needs a dumpster and there are only so many of these things to go around.

“We might be able to get you one in two weeks.” That was the response I received from the first local rental company I called. Liz and I spent the rest of the morning calling companies with similar wait times until I finally found a place that could get us a dumpster in under a fortnight. Five days and $687 later (dumpsters are way more expensive than I expected), a heavily tattooed driver delivered a dumpster I had no idea I was so excited to have in my driveway. The kids weren’t the only ones who cheered when our dumpster was unloaded.

Two weeks later, the same man came back and took our beloved dumpster away. As it drove off, I quietly sang “a big yellow taxi took my dumpster away” to myself. I thought that’s where the story ends, but luckily I was wrong.

Follow-up

On 10/18, I received an email (in the Bcc line) from the rental company stating:

It would help me A LOT if you could write a review... I know it is bold of me to ask but Google loves people that get reviews and punishes those that do not have reviews. It is all very simple, just click on the link and the review box should pop up, click the number of stars (hopefully 5) and say a few words, maybe mention the size of the roll off dumpster rental you got, or if this was the first time you got a dumpster rental for a project. We LOVE it when people give us 5 stars, but what we love more is to get better at our business. So tell us, and the public, the truth about your experience. If it was great, wonderful we will be thrilled to get a 5 star review, if it was anything else we will be disappointed in our performance but we appreciate the honesty and if you tell us where we went wrong we will strive to improve.
CLICK HERE TO RATE US
 

Well, this was all I needed to hear. I LOVE corresponding with businesses via email and providing reviews, so I promptly responded with the following message:

I would love to review the dumpster, as this was absolutely a first for us (our house was flooded, our lives were turned upside down and we lost countless sentimental items that could never be replaced). Despite the nature of the incident, your services were top notch! A couple quick questions on the review specifics:

• What's the approximate word count you guys would prefer?

• Active or passive voice? Is it OK to use the dreaded second-person singular possessive for emphasis?

• Any preferences on SEO best practices?

• Oxford comma -- Yah or Nay?

• Do you favor the shorthand styling of the modern reviewer (i.e., yo, u gotta rent from these jawns! [happy face emoji]) or are you partial to the formal tone of the dot.com Boom craze (known in review circles as "pre-Amazon post modern")?

To which the dumpster rental company replied with:

LOL  you are fantastic. Do you write copy for a living ? 
JUst tell the truth about your experience- I really hope it went well 
Saying the size dumpster you got is also nice

(Note to RPR Readers: This is a developing story.)