Buckhead Can Be Summed Up With Trash Can Valet

A few weeks ago while driving down Roswell Road, I was greeted with a billboard declaring it could solve all my trash problems. This sign resting atop the European Service Center building is advertising Buckhead’s newest appurtenance, Trash Can Valet. The service hopes to fulfill all your trash needs by hauling your trash cans to the street and back. In the eyes of many Atlantans, Buckhead is thought of as bougie and extravagant. In many ways, Trash Can Valet epitomizes Buckhead bougieness at its best.

The weekly service requires the company’s high school and college-aged employees to visit homes twice each week. The employee drags the can down the driveway, deposits it on the street, and does this for a multitude of other homes. The following day, the employee arrives to roll the can up the driveway back into its designated location and returns to bringing other cans to their homes. This bi-weekly service requires minimal work from employees but it costs $25 dollars each week for five minutes of work. This menial task earns the company $300 an hour for work that can easily be done while collecting the mail.

This weekly service targets busy families while ignoring a market that would genuinely benefit from the service. Trash cans can be bulky and awkward items to roll, making it difficult for the elderly to wheel their bins from their home to the street. A service that assists the elderly with their trash cans would ease concerns of those caring for the older generation. The service does not tap into a key market, the traveling businessperson. People away for business oftentimes forget basic home tasks, such as taking out the trash or stopping the mail. With Trash Can Valet, businesspeople can go about their work without trash concerns. People are oftentimes forgetful, especially when the trash schedule changes due to holidays. Having a person dedicated to taking out your trash can take some stress away as it’s one less item for people to worry about on their ever expanding to do list. The service is extravagant, but for many the service can be beneficial.

Taking the trash cans to the street is oftentimes a chore children are assigned to teach them responsibility for their actions. When children are stripped from this activity, the opportunity to learn accountability is withheld. Children are capable of doing many things but adults often undercut their expectations. Collecting the trash is an activity that many see the value in children’s learning, but Trash Can Valet strips this opportunity away from them.

Trash Can Valet perpetuates Americans’ laziness as the service provides a simple task that most can do. Americans have become accustomed to others doing their tasks instead of doing it for themselves. This laziness is furthering a cycle of eliminating tasks that are “below” us. Wonted tasks should not become the responsibility of others.

The ease of Trash Can Valet is appealing, but certainly leaves room for criticism. While Buckhead’s overindulgence with spending is frequently of notice, this new service takes excess to a whole new level.