Last Friday afternoon there was a thunderstorm here at Schloss Bodissey. As storms go, it was a nothingburger — a little bit of lightning, a little bit of thunder, a brief but heavy downpour, and no wind to speak of. Even if I had thought of it, I wouldn’t have put up a warning post about it. There was no way the power would be knocked out by that storm.
And it wasn’t. The lights didn’t even flicker. But I didn’t reckon on the phone company.
The phone and internet both went out during the brief downpour. I thought they would surely come back on quickly, after a negligible storm like that one. And so I waited. And waited. Fixed dinner and waited. Then I went to bed.
The next day (Saturday) the phone was still out. That day happened to be the fourth anniversary of Dymphna’s death, so I kept to my planned schedule. In the afternoon I went down to the church to put fresh flowers (all of them hers, picked from our yard) on her grave. Then I walked across the road to the country store, learned that their phone was working, and asked to use it to call the phone company. The young lady working the cash register was very kind and helpful.
As usual, I had to go through a labyrinth of digital-touch tone menus, beginning with not pressing 2 por español. I had to punch in my phone number. I had to punch in the last four digits of my social. Then it wanted me to punch in a number where I could be reached. I didn’t have one, of course, but I had to give them one to go any further, so I punched in the future Baron’s phone number. Then I went through a series of punch 1 or punch 2 choices that I can’t remember. Then the robot voice told me to wait while it checked my service, and to see if I already had an open repair ticket (I didn’t).
Finally I was put through to a human being in Bangladesh or Kolkata, with a thick Bengali accent and an inferior fidelity phone connection, all while other Apus could be heard babbling in the background. As a result I was only able to understand about 50% of what he said, but it didn’t really matter, because I’ve been through the drill so many times before.
First he asked me the same questions that I’d just punched in all the numbers for. Evidently the robot doesn’t pass on any information to the Gunga Dins who have to talk to customers, so I had to tell him all that stuff all over again. Only then could he pull up my account and look into the issue.
He then told me what I knew all along: there was an area outage as a result of the storm.
“But Baron,” you say, “if you knew it all along, why did you bother going through all that hair-tearing rigmarole with the phone company?”
Because I needed one piece of information: the estimated time when repairs would be completed. I knew from long experience that it would be the final thing that Jamshid would tell me.
And he did: “Mr. Edward [they always call me Mr. Edward; they don’t really get the distinction between first and last names], the estimated time when the repairs will be completed is Monday June 19 at 1:30pm.”
And sure enough, service was restored today ahead of schedule, at about 10am. The signal has returned.
That was on Saturday, so I had two more days to twiddle my thumbs and watch DVDs while my email piled up and people waited for their comments to be approved. During that time I thought about the #!@%*&@?#!! phone company, and how it could possibly take three days to rectify the effects of an itty-bitty trifle of rain. And I think I figured it out.
Continue reading →
I also knew that the phone would come back on today, because it always happens that way. The technician comes to work on Monday morning and looks at his trouble tickets while he drinks a cup of coffee. Then he gets in his panel truck and comes out here to Eerie Hollow to reconnect the string to the tin can.
