The Answer, My Friend, Is Put The Blower In The Bin
Blow It Out Your Arse of Altona writes:
Dear Westie, I’ve got one word for you: Leaf Blowers. The maintenance crew where I work use them, all the time, every day. They have ear muffs so it’s not so bad for them, but as my office abuts the green bit of my workplace I have to put up with that racket all the time. The maintenance team say they’ll try to limit use to times when people aren’t at work, but they don’t. What can I do?
Ah BIOYAOA, Satan’s hairdryer, the Devil’s dusty trumpet, The gardener’s gusty gadget. I could go on but then I’d just be droning on and on for the sake of making noise, just like the dreaded blowers themselves. I think at the end of times, when the world is winding down, the noise we hear will be that of the leaf blower – a ceaseless, tuneless grinding drone, bereft of hope. They make me want to brick myself up in a wall cavity and have done with it.
It’s not as if they even do the job they’re supposed to do anyway. Their very name is a betrayal of their proposed function. Rather than tidy leaves up they just blow them away, in ever widening dusty circles – none of the elegance or precision of a good stiff-bristled yard broom.
I have no doubt that you are given the brush off by the powers that be when you raise a complaint about these tranquillity busters. You’d be seen as weird, old-fashioned, obstructionist. One of those types. HR would be notified and the next time you got to see your file, you’d find a red line under your name and you’d know that you’d been noticed, but for all the wrong reasons. Your cards had been marked, literally…
But I digress.
There’s only one solution to your problem and that is to sweep it under the carpet, literally. Get a big piece of carpet and lay it over the leaves outside your window. Problem solved. Or, glue the leaves to the ground and drive the blower wielders insane. Or glue them to the trees. Or dress up as Billy Joel and serenade them from your window with your version of ‘Leaf a Tender Moment Alone’ every time they start work. I hope these suggestions help.
From last edition
In last month’s Dear Westie, we pushed a few buttons, literally, on the subject of the full-flush button being disabled on some toilets. Mo on the Po of Footscray remembers being reduced to tears in a public toilet years ago as she tried over and over again to send her best wishes to Werribee, but to no avail. The lesson learned for her was to lay off the kidney beans and to save her best work for the home office, if you know what I mean.
If anything in this column has raised issues for you, or if there’s anything you’d like to get off your chest, write to Dear Westie via editor@thewestsider.com.au
