I’ve interacted with 3 plow services. Usually a 1-2 man operation. All 3 destroyed shit. Like my driveway and landscaping. I had to put cones out. But I need their services so I don’t bitch about it. I travel for work, have no choice as my wife won’t drive my plow or snowblower. To be fair the machines are beasts and she’s not comfortable running them.

Complain to/hassle a plow guy? In this economy? 😬😬😬

There’s nothing wrong with having expectations if you’re paying for a service. Just be prepared to pay more or get dumped if you create what they consider to be a hassle.

I think "corrupt politicians" is referring to specific individuals; and "corrupt politics" refers to the system we all, corrupt politician or otherwise, inhabit.

So the prior is individual centered and the later is system centered.

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I'm of the opinion that if you aren't getting what you paid for, that's a legit thing to call in. You gave them money and didn't get the service you requested. I wouldn't say "come back and plow again you missed a spot", but I think it's fine to say "hey y'all missed a big part of the drive today, can you make sure to get the (whatever they fucked up) next time?"

If the job was done correctly but in a way that you disagree with, that's kind of a get the fuck over it type of deal. Sand too close to your boyfriends car? IDK, if there's not any damage I think he just needs to park his car where it won't get sanded or go sand that area himself so the company ignores it. How do you even plan to fix that? "Hey, this one house on the route of 80 houses you plow wants you to sand three feet further from the passenger side door of their car". Like... you might not even have the same driver next time. I think that feedback just falls flat due to it being impractical. Nobody is going to remember where you wanted your sand dropped.

If it was something big, like having your lawn landscaped or your house painted, sure. But that works because companies sink hours of labor into those jobs, not minutes. This is like asking your postman to deliver packages a certain way. You can try, but you're going to get what you get at the end of the day.

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Seems rare to see a title fight post in r/Vermont. I'm a little excited about it

Given the obvious entrenchment of power behind capitalism, do you have any expectation that your preferred world view will ever come to be?

Edit: and compound interest?! Is banking an acceptable creator of wealth?

The guy is going out of his way to plow close to cars to give the best service he can. Next time he is plowing you can go tell him that he doesn't have to get too close to the car and you can deal with it. Pitch it as making it easier on the plow guy and that way he can do a fast pass near the car and get done quicker.

I think I understand this post now, it was really hard to find any specific point you were making but I totally get it AND agree with you. Growing up in Rutland county I had to drive about 15 mins to work and school, even longer to hang out with friends and do other fun things like swimming holes etc. Now that I live in Burlington I absolutely relish in the fact that I can walk to the grocery store. We definitely need to walk places more, but the big issue is how do we build up our urban areas to be more affordable to live in? Rutland has so much sprawl, Burlington continued to get flooded with UVMers. I appreciate your perspective though, for future research I'd recommend looking into the differences between electric and fossil fuel heating. Then call your reps and senators, theres a super important bill called the Affordable Heat Act making its way through the state house. Keep an eye on it

Take the money you’d spend on plowing for a few years, buy your own plow.

Still plow close to your boyfriend’s car.

It was taken on one of the Champlain Islands.

What are my incorrect beliefs again? Just trying to figure out what you're arguing against. Now you're talking about snowfall vs snowfall that "sticks around"... seems like that was the whole point we were trying to make in the first place.

Your boyfriend should have moved his car so the plow guy could do his job.

You are paying to have the driveway sanded and yet his car is in the driveway. So either the driver takes a wide berth and a big section of the driveway doesn't get sanded (and boyfriend slips and falls on the ice going to his car) or the driver tries to cover as much driveway as possible.

On the other hand, I wouldn't consider you difficult if you told the plow driver "hey, I know it is hard to sand/plow when there are cars in the driveway, feel free to just give a wide berth to the cars rather than trying to sand right up to the cars." It is all in how you say it and how often you say it.

Just wondering, do you tell your boyfriend how to manage his house?

I’d probably mention the car… damaging your car warrants a call.

Weird angle

So it sounds like the plow guy did exactly what one would want and expect. He touched up the driveway, he didn’t encroach on the area where cars were parked, and he caused no damage. He had no control over the car being where it was but it didn’t matter because the car wasn’t damaged.

Your bf sounds like a pill and I have to wonder how he behaves in other aspects of life. Consider for example how he’s going to be when your 3-year-old doesn’t put his toys away “correctly,” if you were to have kids with him.

Yeah if you have expectations you need to let them know ahead of time. I have never plowed so I don't know the specifics of that industry but if you have non standard expectations I would try contacting the office and ask what is the best way of communication that to the driver. If your requests are kind of extra I would also consider meeting the driver when he gets to your house and talking to him as well and at that point offering a hot coffee or something. If you're waiting until after and complaining it's creating a problem for the company, possibly getting the driver in trouble, and probably costing them money so that's definitely not the move. What are they doing that's wrong anyways?

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I thought that if I had said "stop driving novelty-sized vanity trucks because it's selfish and wasteful," or "stop driving and flying so much" we'd get into the normal fights about climate change: personal action vs corporations and the government, and VT's impact vs China's, etc.

I wanted to add a perspective to those conversations in the future, and to people complaining about the cost of energy, that it's objectively cheap. People only compare it to what the price used to be, which may not be a meaningful comparison, and to the price of other fuels. That is what this post is doing, by saying we pay much less than manual labor. That allows us to do too much. So the main point was that sense of scale. Even our everyday lives are out of scale. Out of scale with what the earth can provide. To me that inspires climate action.

But I did think the post was too long and probably making too many different points. Without the context that I think that what humans did for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, without ruining the world, should be a point of comparison. Not that we should return to that lifestyle but it gives us the scale that keeps things in balance.

I never said anything about a daily record, in fact I said you wouldn’t find those figures BECAUSE it changes daily. If you wanted to look at annual snowpack (which is what it seemed you were wondering about) you’d need to average it out for every year you wanted to look at and aggregate that… But you take it however you want sunshine.

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Maybe move your vehicles when the plow guy shows up to clear the and or sand. Not sure that is the issue but I can say from experience that it's really a pain in the ass when people don't move their vehicles and whatever else is in the way. Good luck with your snow removal dilemma.

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