Comedian Carl Hurley tells the story about trying to throw a trash can away. He said it’s the one thing you can’t get the garbage man to pick up. He said, I set an old rusty garbage can out at the street one morning thinking the garbage man would understand that it needed to be thrown away. He said, when I came back that afternoon the can was stacked up with the rest of my empty trash cans.
Well the next week I put it out again and this time I turned it upside down so they could see that the bottom had several holes in it and it needed thrown away. When I came home it was stacked up next to the empty cans again.
The next week I took a sledgehammer and I beat the can in pretty good and I left it out front and when I came home not only was it stacked up next to the other empty trash cans but the garbage man had actually tried to beat it back into shape.
And so he said finally I did the only thing I could do. I went to the hardware store and bought a heavy duty chain and a padlock and I chained the old can to a large tree in my front yard. And sure enough, that night somebody stole it.