Your Lines Have Been Crossed

(While cutting back a vine outside my house, I discover that the engineer who installed the phone line attached it to a branch. It happens to be the same colour as the vine, so now I’ve cut it by mistake. I contact the phone company, who say they’ll send a repair worker on a particular day between eight and one. One o’clock on that day comes and they’re still not there, so I phone them again.)

Representative: “According to our system, they’ve flagged it as done.”

Me: “Well, it isn’t, because no one’s been here all day.”

Representative: “They say it’s been done.”

Me: “I’m looking at it right now, and it’s still broken.”

Representative: “Are you sure about that?”

Me: “It’s trailing wires.”

Representative: “Clearly, the problem was somewhere else in the system.”

Me: “No. The problem is right outside my house.”

Representative: “They say they tested it.”

Me: “My landline is still not working. They haven’t tested it, because they haven’t been here.”

Representative: “There must have been confusion somewhere.”

Me: “I told you the line has broken outside my house. I gave you an address. How can you confuse that?”

Representative: “What do you want us to do?”

Me: “Contact the people who were supposed to come here and find out what is going on.”

Representative: “Ooh, they’re a bit difficult to get hold of.”

Me: “What kind of system is it if they can remotely mark jobs as done, but you can’t just phone them up?”

Representative: “They’ll be with you at some point. You must understand, we’re a bit busy.”

Me: “Do you think I’ve not got things to do today? I’ve kept up my end of the bargain and stayed in all day. What am I supposed to do? Stay in the rest of the day? Tomorrow? I want you to find out!”

Representative: “There’s procedures we need to go through if there’s extra work that needs doing.”

Me: “No. This isn’t a case of ‘extra work.’ This is a case of work that needs doing because they haven’t done it!”

Representative: “All right. I’ll phone them, but I need the line clear.”

Me: “Just phone me as soon as you know something.”

(It turned out they’d been sent to the wrong address. Exactly what they fixed there, I don’t know.)