Elephant In Exile

Another Day, Another Gas Outage

Well, let's see, it was 49 degrees in my house this morning when I got out of bed. That makes it the 5 times in that past ten days that I don't have heat. Washington Gas, bless there hearts, is sending someone out today to fix it, but no word on when. Of course last Wednesday the said they were sending someone out each of the three times they were called, then on Thursday they said I never called.

I'm taking a Zen approach to it all (although it is hard to do). I tried to personalize the situation for the WG representative on the phone, saying, "Look, I appreciate you help, but in the last week, I've had to take every other day off of work to wait for a WG technician to come and fix my heat. I'm sure you understand, that you'd probably loose your job if you kept missing work like that, what can we do to fix this problem in the long term."

WG rep response, "Well, I can't help you with that, this is the customer service line. You know you don't have to call during the day, you can wait "

Me, "And what do you advise to help prevent my pipes from freezing during that time?"

WG, "Sir I really don't know."

Me, "Ok, fair enough, your the emergency line and you've been helpful. Happy New Year."

I hang up...have a brief bout of turrets. "#$#%! Mother-#$#(&%#@!" call and leave a message with my Public Service Commission (City utility oversight agency), turn on some space heaters, and wait.

Damn it's cold!