Old chewing gum? Yep. But to be specific, old, chewed gum improperly disposed of. In my field, Facilities Maintenance, those of us who do the actual work of maintaining the appearence (and this also includes all of the hard working janitors out there), along with the systems, of buildings constantly find gum where it doesn't belong - on the ground, on stairs and handrails, the side of mirrors in restrooms, plus hundreds of other "clever" places - rather than in trash cans, or still in the mouths of gum chewers.
I chew (sugarless) gum, myself, all the time, and when I'm finished with a piece, I throw it away in the trash. I really hate it when I'm walking down the street on a particularly hot day, and step in some gum that some thoughtless twit tossed on the sidewalk. It's a pain in the ... ahem, "rear" to get off of my shoe, you know? It's even more difficult to get out of carpet, although those of us who work in FM do have our ways - we freeze it, and then scrape it up, which takes time to do. Time that could be better spent in other areas.
Apparently I'm not the only one who has this pet peeve, either, as this article in the P-I shows. There is a government 'summit' going on in London on this very subject. Apparently the Brits are a sloppy lot, throwing their used gum willy-nilly, costing local governments in Britain rather large sums of money cleaning it up. One thing that has been proposed, as a way to recoup some of the costs is a tax on gum. I'm usually opposed to taxes in general, but this is one tax that I would support here, if it would curb people from throwing their used gum on the ... er, curb ... instead of in the trash, where it belongs.
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