String Up A Line Of Instant Karma

We moved into an apartment building which had been converted from a single-family dwelling. When we moved in, we ordered cable service simply because it was the only high-speed Internet in the area. This was the first time cable was installed to the building. We went ahead and got the entire digital package, since it wound up being cheaper with the bundle fee.

Our landlord grumped about the cable install because “TV is free through the air and no one needs Internet.” This was long before “ok, boomer” was a thing, but the sentiment was the same.

Fast forward a few months: it turns out our landlord has decided to get cable because he wants to watch all of the sports games and they’re not all “free through the air.” Who knew? Sadly, I learned about his cable order the hard way.

I get home on a Thursday evening and go to turn on the news, and I have no signal. Sometimes, that happens, of course. Likewise, my Internet is also out. Since I have VOIP, this means no phone, as well.

Fortunately, my in-laws’ place is just down the road. I head down there and discover that they have full service, so I use their phone to call in about my cable being out. The company reports that it is active and shows service. When I get home, there’s still nothing.

The cable company finally agrees to send out a tech the next day to troubleshoot. They guarantee me a service window of 8:00 am to 12:00 pm. I call my boss to let him know I’ll be in to work late.

The next morning rolls around, and the cable guy shows up and notices that, while my service is active, the cable was physically disconnected from my apartment and swapped to my landlord’s apartment. He swapped it back and then called in to his dispatcher from my living room so I got to overhear the conversation.

After a bit of back and forth, they discovered that the installer for my landlord’s service the day prior had shown up, discovered an active line, and rather than running a second cable, he just swapped mine over to the landlord’s side and called the job done. He was supposed to string a line from the pole to the house for the new service, like was on the order.

Since this wraps up close to lunchtime, I decide to eat at home before going to work. As I’m eating, I hear a frantic pounding on my apartment door. I go to answer and it’s a different cable tech. It’s the installer from the day before, who has been called off whatever job he was working in order to complete the install for my landlord that he screwed up yesterday. The installer has decided this is a good time to tell me off for calling in the problem, and don’t I know how hard it is for him to have to come back and fix it?

My landlord and I both call in complaints about his attitude and behavior. I mean, I might have felt bad for him having to, like, do his job and all, except he didn’t do it right and inconvenienced me and then whined about it. And then, he blamed me for putting him in the position of having to come back to do his job right the second time. So, no, I didn’t feel bad at all. F*** that guy.