Beggar's Choice

Hmm, I haven't had too much to say lately. There have been a few things irking me and I guess I've been a little preoccupied as a result. None of my irksome issues are very important, but as a group, they seem to have left me with a bit of a brain drain.

Is it me, or have people have been especially unhelpful and unappreciative lately? I don't know, maybe it is me. I'm in a mood (ie: bad) and I keep finding things to reinforce my state of mind. Need an example?

Well, for one I've been doing the whole FreeCycle thing. Google FreeCycle if you want to know all the ins and outs, but bottom line, it's sort of a message board designed to keep good, usable items out of the nation's landfills. Say you have a coffee table sitting unused in your basement, you could (as I recently did) post it as an OFFER to which someone could reply by email and request ownership of said coffee table. And, as the name implies, all of this goes on free of charge.

My biggest complaint with the system is the large number of FreeCylers that request items and then don't show up to get them, not on time at any rate. As if it's such a big friggin inconvenience to pick up the stuff they're getting for free. Maybe they're of the mind that nothing is truly "free" unless it's delivered on a silver platter, or trailer, as the case may be.

So far I've given away a dining table and six chairs, a black metal coffee table with end tables, a brown coffee table with metal legs, a car seat, a bag of padded hangers, a dehumidifier and a spring form cake pan. I'm also waiting for someone to pick up two throw pillows as I write this -- three days late by the way. In all, I think only two of the people taking stuff showed up when they said they would. Nice.

I just leave the stuff on my front porch, on the patio or in the driveway so it's not that big of a deal. And yet, I'm annoyed.

In addition to tardiness, another characteristic exhibited by some FreeCyclers could loosely be labeled as gall; not necessarily unmitigated gall, but not too far off.

For instance, the person that took the table and chair set had posted a WANTED request. I believe her post mentioned "a large family in desperate need of a table -- with at least five chairs." When I emailed her saying that I had a table with not five, but six chairs, she replied by asking me if the table was in good condition.

Good condition? You want to know what CONDITION it's in? It's in FREE condition! And since I had been using it myself up until a month ago, I think it's more than suitable for a family in "desperate need!" Good grief. The best part about that little saga isn't just that they came to pick it up a day late, I've come to expect that. No, it's that this person has been posting again looking for, you guessed it, "a table and chairs for a large family in need."

I know I should be grateful just to be rid of the table and chairs, but seriously, wasn't my table good enough? Or did they sell it because it was too good, or maybe it just didn't match the other items in their fashionable but free décor.

Does that seem wrong to anyone else? I don't know, maybe it is just me. . .