Surrey Leader - Litterbugs

It's been awhile since I last wrote about the Surrey Leader, mainly past posts have been lack of it being delivered, just showing up randomly every now and then. Oh yes, those were the good days!
Here's a link to a post I wrote about the Surrey Leader a few years ago http://cherylrhodes.blogspot.ca/2009/12/surrey-leader.ht
ml and today's post will cover some of the same topics.

The building in downtown Cloverdale on the corner of 176th Street and 57th Avenue will always be known to me as the Surrey Leader building. They moved out of there many years ago and a pawn shop was there for years and now currently houses a home décor shop, La Belle Vie.

When I was growing up the Surrey Leader was delivered on Thursdays by Canada Post. It was a paid subscription service. The paper came folded up like most newspapers did back then and you had to unfold it and read a big paper. My mother got fed up with the views of the Surrey Leader and cancelled the subscription. One day it showed up on our doorstep and she phoned in to the Surrey Leader to see why they'd delivered it. She was told it was a new free service and was asked how she liked it. "I don't," said my mother, "I cancelled my subscription because all you ever write about is abortion and the school board. Today when I opened up the paper you delivered I see that's what you're still writing about: the school board and abortion."

Around then she coined the term for this new free delivery service as the Shitty Leader. The name has stuck with me all my life. That's the perfect name for this newspaper. I actually read a copy a few years ago and although they had some other articles in it, yes abortion and the school board were covered too.

I don't read the newspaper myself, a lot of it stemming back to my mother's views and quite rightly nicknamed the Shitty Leader.

When we bought our house in 2007 we were getting multiple copies of the Leader delivered to our house. The delivery person must have been used to the house being vacant and the doorstep and over the backyard fence became dumping grounds for the Shitty Leader. I did complain. How many copies of the newspaper do they think I need to read? Not stacks. If I was going to read it I'd only need one copy. To be fair they did act on my complaint and got the multiple newspapers being dumped at my house cut back to one.

I've also seen copies of the Surrey Leader dumped under hedges and around Cloverdale Creek in the 57th Avenue section. This is one newspaper that is very comfortable being labeled litterbugs.

On April 2, 2014 I came home to find the Surrey Leader in multiple pieces scattered all over my yard and down the street. I took photos:

                                                   

I sent the photos and what I thought of them littering to the Surrey Leader. I'm still waiting for a response. I won't hold my breath. It's not like this company actually cares about pissing off the residents of Surrey.

On April 24, 2014 the Surrey Leader plus all the advertising inside is scattered all over my garden, front yard, side yard, and down the street. There is more than one copy. I've had to spend time picking the Shitty Leader up and putting it in the recycle bin again.


I've tried to think up what can be done about this seeing as how the Surrey Leader won't respond to complaints about being litterbugs. I thought about driving it over to their new digs on 152 Street and scattering it around their parking lot to see how they like it. But in this day and age of video cameras and surveillance that would be dumb and lowering myself to their level by being a litterbug. The things I can come up with are box them up, phone a courier that does COD, and ship it back to the Surrey Leader. What about writing about an invoice for $25 for cleaning up their mess and submitting it to them. If they don't pay, take them to small claims court. I'm reminded of a time my father took someone to small claims court over $10 just for the principal of the thing.


I struggle with the decision to ask Surrey Leader to stop all delivery to my house. I know some poor person who can't find a job anywhere else is stuck delivering this local paper and getting paid by each one delivered. I hate to take that money away from someone who obviously desperately needs it to take this kind of job.


I've come up with a report card for the Surrey Leader or the Shitty Leader, whichever you want to call it:


Litterbugs - A+
Responding to complaints - Fail
Being a good corporate citizen - Fail
Being a good Surrey, BC citizen - Fail
Caring about the environment - Fail

King Tut's Donairs has Closed

The other day I walked past King Tut's Donairs and noticed a big "for rent" sign in the window.


The restaurant was on 176th Street, almost across the street from 56A Avenue. Prior to being King Tut's Donairs it was a Mexican restaurant called Rico Burrito and then Clover Creek BBQ. The odd thing about the 2 previous restaurants, circa 2009 to 2011, was that they were hardly ever open. Hit and miss. I don't know why they bothered putting a sign on the door with their hours. They also had the same phone number, speculating the same ownership.


After being empty for awhile, King Tut's opened up in this location, home of the $5 donair. They were open late at night until 2 or 3 in the morning. Cloverdale is a sleepy little place and I didn't think there was that much business to stay open well after Midnight. Eventually the hours changed to close at 8pm. King Tut's was definitely open daily and they served a good product, and had about 30 different types of donair types. The big problem was half the time they couldn't complete the donair ordered due to lack of ingredients, and this might be in the afternoon, not even the dinner rush. After asking the clerk for 4 or 5 different choices, none available, we often went elsewhere to eat. They also had a product called donair fries but everytime we ordered it the clerk said they hadn't received training. I'm not sure if that was true or if they were missing ingredients. I ate donairs there easily a dozen times, but the last time I had a donair there it was moldy and I couldn't bring myself to go back there.