August 13, 2008
Dear Everyone:
The lights are back on in the kitchen.
As you may recall, on July 8th I hired a
not-so-handyman, “Mark”, to fix my kitchen’s
fluorescent lights.
On that day he decided that the
ballasts needed to be replaced.
Wrong kind of ballasts, at a cost to me of $80.
The following Friday, he put in new ballasts, then
decided the fixtures needed to be replaced.
He’d be back on Monday.
He showed up promptly at 7:00 pm and replaced the fixtures.
Still no lights. At
this point, he threw up his hands and gave up.
Referral to a “real” electrician who subsequently declined to
take the referral.
In the meantime, my supervisor had given me the
number for a real electrical business that had done work for her.
I called, got the machine, left a message.
No call back. Next
day (Saturday), I tried again with the same outcome.
By this time, I was sick with “classic viral
stomach flu” and had very little desire to deal with any of it.
I determined to ignore the problem for the next two weeks.
Finally, one day last week, my supervisor asked how
the lights situation was going and I explained about not hearing from
the business. She promptly
called them and, this time getting a live person on the phone, launched
into a routine in which she told them how mortified she was that they
had not contacted me. There
was some reference to a designated scapegoat.
Nevertheless, about 20 minutes later I got a call
in my office from the receptionist and we set up an appointment for 1:00
pm on Friday, August 8th, which I would take as (yet another)
vacation day.
When was the last time you had a contractor call
and ask if he could come earlier than the appointed time?
“Jared” called me at 10:30 Friday morning because he was “ahead
of schedule” and could he come between 11:15 and 11:30?
He arrived right at 11:30 and took less than an hour to diagnose
the problem (everything “Mark” had done was wrong), go out and buy the
necessary parts and install all new lights.
He even hauled away all the old parts and useless light tubes,
something “Mark” had said would cost extra.
So the lights are back on in the kitchen.
The only thing is, after a month,
I sort of got into the habit of leaving the lights off and just using
natural light from outside.
But I’m sure I’ll get used to using lights again.
By the way, that same afternoon (8/8/08) my phone
rang and I could see from the Caller ID that it was “Mark”.
I let the machine pick it up.
“Mark” left a message that he “couldn’t remember what conclusion
we had arrived at”, but that he was available if I wanted to call him
and “…I’ll come out and take another look at your sprinklers.”
I don’t have any sprinklers.
And if I did, I wouldn’t let this guy anywhere near them.
Love, as always,
Pete
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