Old Doswell Road resident and waste generator Paul Riddick claims he is “sick and tired” of the arrogant, angry and condescending attitude of the one-eyed attendant at the Doswell transfer station.“I get yelled at every time I go there,” Riddick says. “I can’t do anything to that old one-eyed guy’s satisfaction. Everytime I pull up to the compactor there he is, talking down to me and yelling that I’m throwing my trash in the wrong place, or some damn thing.”
Riddick says the problems with the cyclopean attendant started the first time he visited the dump, about 4 years ago. “We started out cordial enough, but he saw me trying to throw a screen door into the hopper. He went off, screaming at me that aluminum doors had to go in the aluminum recycling can down by the paper cans. It was downhill after that. No matter what I brought or where I threw it it was wrong, and he responded by yelling, frequently in the presence of my wife, my son or other dump patrons. I was completely humiliated.”
The problems continued since then. Riddick says he has even tried to mix up the days he goes to the dump, saving his trash for Sundays, or late in the evenings when he believes there is a better chance of the depth-perception-challenged attendant being absent. “No such luck.” Riddick says, defeated. “The old SOB must live in that little shack, because no matter what day or time I pull up with a load, here he comes, barging out of that shack, hootin’ and a hollerin’ at me. He’s worse than a junkyard dog, I swear to God.”
The animosity reached a boiling point this past Saturday, when the tunnel-visioned attendant accused Riddick of throwing a sofa into the compactor. “I told that old coot that I did not throw that sofa in the hopper,” Riddick says, getting all defensive. “He kept swearing I did. Finally I told him, ‘Mr – you accuse me one more time of throwing that sofa in that hopper you and me are goin’ to come to blows!’ Well, he didn’t back down; in fact, he got all up in my face, with his gigantic wrap-around black sunglasses, telling me I had been trouble since day one, and that he was going to report me to the county for violating waste procurement bylaws, or some such garbage.”
A check at the county courthouse verified the single-eyed attendant’s accusations. “The county indeed does have specific bylaws that address not just organization but behavior at our numerous transfer facilities,” says Hanover County administrator Bob “Bathmat” Rizzardo. “Since the Riddick situation is an ongoing investigation, I cannot comment on specifics in the case. I heard also that Mr. Riddick dropped car batteries in barrels of oil-based paint. That is a clear violation of transfer station policy, and will be investigated.”
Meanwhile, Riddick is letting his trash pile up on his side porch, pending the outcome of the investigation of his case. “I am being singled out, and made an example of,” claims Riddick. “I am fighting mad.”
