Seriously, Where Are You Getting All These Milk Crates?

The Milk Crate Challenge is the latest of the viral crazes and, against long odds, one of the stupidest. That said, what is often times terrible for the participant is tremendous content. Whether the aspiring athlete completes the task with skill or fails mightily, there really isn't such a thing as a boring MCC. It's as if producers from America's Funniest Home Videos and American Ninja Warrior combined forces to merge their two disciplines for a can't-miss program.

Crating is one of those sports that requires a tremendous amount of infrastructure. Participants must assemble at least a dozen boxes in order to build any type of decent pyramid. Which leads me to a nagging but no less confounding question.

Just where in the hell are all those doing the challenge getting all the crates?

Perhaps others have had different life experiences but producing 15-20 milk crates, even with a day's lead time, would have been a daunting task for me. The only time I was routinely around so many boxes with any type of regularity is when I worked in the kitchen of a nursing home. And even then, with a head count of more than 500 eating three square meals a day, the walk-in cooler never had more than that amount at any time. In case the statute of limitations hasn't passed I will not identify the facility when revealing that those crates were often reused.

No one to my knowledge ever worked out a side deal with kitchen supervisor that allowed them to load copious amount of discarded crates into their pickup truck and such a request would have raised eyebrows. Now, keep in mind that this was early in the century and the world was a much different place. Perhaps there's been an unseen proliferation of public crate trade that's grown steadily over the past 20 years. Yet something tells me it hasn't.

I'm willing to look inward and admit that precious little of my time has spent scouting locations for crates. Milk consumption remains a passion so obviously there are empty ones to be found behind bodegas and restaurants and any place else that ushers in weekly deliveries. Perhaps people have always been helping themselves to unattended receptacles as part of an unspoken life cycle for the product.

If I sound woefully ignorant and out-of-touch as to the accessibility and availability of collecting milk crates, please let me know. I really do want to learn and understand the best methods and the methods that are helping the craze increase in popularity.

Just asking questions here.