The Will to Resist

Jerry’s Marginalia — “The Container Problem”

They bought a small trash can because it looked right. I knew it was going to fail the moment it entered the room.

Small containers always fail first. Not because they’re bad — but because they’re asked to hold more than they were designed for.

You sneeze? Full. You live? Full. You blink? Overflow.

So I adapted.

I dumped it. I staged it. I moved the real can to the garage. The one with the lid. The one made for reality.

I compacted. I doubled the bags. Then tripled them. I kicked the dolly aside and kept the system running until the people whose job it was to empty it finally showed up.

No “hey, thanks.” No acknowledgment. Just quiet continuation.

That’s fine.

I’ve learned something important over the years: When a system is undersized, a person becomes the buffer.

I’ve been that buffer at home. At work. At OBE — where there were no A-frames for glass sheets, just instructions to “separate it anyway” and carry chaos on your spine.

That was a load of bollocks.

Then January came. The eighth. I stepped out to handle my head properly. Did the paperwork. Did it right. Came back out on the fifteenth.

Kept my job. Worked the sixteenth. Rested the seventeenth and eighteenth. Back in on the nineteenth. Twenty hours here. Thirty-two there. Talking to management. Covering shifts. Adjusting.

Still adapting.

Not mad. Not resentful. Just observant.

Because here’s the thing no one says out loud:

The person who keeps adapting is never thanked — they’re just expected to keep holding the mess.

Until one day they stop.

Or they don’t.

And the system finally learns what it was leaning on.