What would Smokey the Bear do?
By Wolfy
It was snowing outside and a slow Friday to boot which made it hard not to be thinking about the fresh snow I’d be skiing in the morning. I had to find a constructive way to get through the day. I turned my thoughts on the perennial problem of filthy overflowing trashcans in the break-room of the environmental lab where I work. Beset with feelings of frustration, helplessness and devious anger, I brought myself calm and focus with the thought: What would Smokey the Bear do?
Obviously, the cliché, overused, and patently ineffectual route would be to write on a post-it note: Your momma don’t work here, so CLEAN UP YOUR OWN [fucking] MESS! It is the metaphorical post-it slap in the face that doesn’t make anyone take the consequences of their actions, and responsibilities as a human being to heart. What it does do is insult your coworkers, and make them all the more apt to balance their skanky Lean Cuisine tray atop the cornice of paper towels already threatening to slide on the talus of bread crumb thus killing, or mortally wounding, the dozens of ants feasting there-on.
With Smokey the Bear as my role mode of self empowering stewardship I came up with the following post-it-pictogram solutions and stuck them to the wall above the trashcans.
Pictogram 1 is modeled after the old Works Progress Administration posters. The graphic is a true pictogram as it conveys a message without any real need of text. The message addresses the first part of the problem. Usually, overflow can be averted simply by compacting the contents of the trashcan before it reaches the rim. The text however, with its whimsical cliché, is meant to encourage recognition of the problem and compliance with the actions indicated in the pictogram.
Pictogram 2 is most closely based on the Smokey the Bear posters where he says, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” You can also see in them a trace of the Keep America Beautiful adds featuring second generation Italian American, Espera “Iron Eyes Cody” DeCorti, complete with frowny face and tear. Again, this pictogram is complete without text, but the text adds humor and whimsy while alluding to personal responsibility (that of emptying the trashcan) and the silliness of the original situation (people being too lazy to clean up after themselves, preferring to wait until the janitorial service arrives every Thursday evening).
I posted the pictograms last Friday morning. Throughout the day they got a few laughs, and more importantly, I felt like a few people recognized the problem and their own complicity in it. Suspicions rested on me as the mystery pictogrammer, though I’ve yet to take credit for it, preferring to claim that I can’t hear the question, as my ipod is too loud. I was of course EXTREMELY happy with myself, and that elevated self confidence lasted well into Saturday, resulting in some reckless behavior in soft powder on The Chutes at Mt. Rose.Monday morning, however, found my legs sore, knees aching and artwork of the previous Friday torn down, crumpled and deposited at the bottom of the still-nearly-empty trashcan. We have an ill-tempered “person” working Four-Tens who didn’t see them Friday to whom I attribute the vandalism as well as most of the overflowing trashcan problem.
Wednesday morning finds the weather forecast brilliant for weekend freshies, but trashcans full of loosely wadded paper towels, SlimFast cans, TV dinner trays, yogurt cups, take-out boxes and something that smells like manky egg-rolls stuffed with garlic hot-dogs.
Most people would give up, their perspicacity dropping with the snowflakes that are again falling outside. Most people wouldn’t already have a list of new post-it-pictogram ideas to spring on their co-workers. Most people wouldn’t have even bothered in the first place, preferring to think about the fresh powder accumulating over night. Most people would roll down to Quisnos and let an awkward pimply high-school kid worry about the trash. But sitting here at my desk listening to The Prodigy through my headphones, I realize (as if the thought had been electronically mixed into my consciousness by a skillful DJ): that’s not what Smokey The Bear would do…
Author’s note: I am not a graphic artist. I have no formal artistic training. The pictures submitted were, in fact, rendered by me with no outside help or instruction, painstakingly over the course of several minutes using only black Sharpie Marker and white Xerox copy paper. This does not constitute an endorsement of those materials.
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