Never underestimate the power of "Free"

It was an interesting day in the Spokane Valley today... a local electronics seller teamed up with Waste Management and... Sony, I think? At any rate, the deal was supposed to be for people to drop off unwanted electronics at their warehouse for recycling at no charge, and also get a coupon worth money off on new gear, or some such. This event was heavily advertised, including a full-page newspaper ad and a "team-up" with a local morning news program.

Now, for those of you not from this area, you should know that "cheap" is a favorite word for most Spokanites, eclipsed only by "free"... normally, this is best demonstrated by the prevalence of buffet dining in the region, and the healthy attendance of store closing sales by the scavengers among us, myself included. It's also a region that, by and large, isn't particularly "well off"... people hold onto things like old computers and TVs on the basis that they might need them as a fallback, should something happen to their current equipment... especially since they don't know how to "safely" dispose of their computers, and trips to the waste transfer station cost money.

Oh, one more note... the group holding this recycling drive didn't establish much in the way of limits on what you could bring in, beyond "no appliances". Care to guess how things evolved from that point?

I was watching the news this morning on the affiliated station... the event was supposed to run from something like 7am to 4pm, it was 9am, and traffic was backed up several blocks to the nearest freeway offramps. The police had been called in for traffic/crowd control, and were pleading for anybody else coming down to use alternate routes. Word from the newsies was that they were looking at needing to bring in more containers for all the junk that people were bringing in, the ones on-site showcasing some of the "vintage" technology that had been brought in (think old record players and wood-cabinet TV sets), the ones further away looking more and more frazzled as the insanity continued.

Of course, I'm not immune to the lure of getting rid of old tech for free... I figured (especially since I had some laundry needing doing) that I'd wait for the afternoon, when things died down a bit, and dredge out my basement's collection of old tech goodies. I made it to the hornet's nest about 2pm, and traffic was still, to put it mildly, nuts... you had to make it all the way in to the center of the madness before anybody told you that they had closed the collection station early, because they didn't have anyplace to put any more junk from people's basements. Of course, there was still signage up directing people to come to the center, nary a "closed early due to popular demand" sign or any such to be seen... just some obviously ragged-out police doing their best to keep the swarm somewhat orderly.

Me, I shrugged, drove off to the transfer station and paid my $7 to unload my bounty (I sure wasn't going to stuff it back in my basement!). I'm thinking this might turn into a PR nightmare for the local companies involved, though... it'll be interesting to see what tomorrow's news has to say about the whole mess.