Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Mr. Fix It
We had a maintenance man in last week to fix a few items in our home. His primary approach to this task seemed to be telling us that in fact there was nothing wrong with the items in question and that we ought to just live with them. It was kind of like repair therapy. But we finally convinced him that, no, we could not "just ignore" the squealing sound emanating from our buzzer, and he set about making actual repairs.
Because I have not yet managed to find someone who is willing to pay me for sitting at home and watching other people work, I had to head into the office during this process. But I got to be involved, anyway, because my sister kept me updated with frequent calls.
"Can you come back home? I locked myself out," she asked. "The maintenance guy wanted to look at the air conditioner on the roof and when we came back I realized I didn't have my keys."
Then, before I could get out the door came the second call.
"Never mind, we got in," she informed me. "The maintenance guy just kind of jimmied the lock. It took like two seconds."
I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or very, very much alarmed at this point. Before I could decide I got a third call.
"Oh, by the way, it turned out my keys were in my back pocket, anyway. So we're good."
I've got to start screening my calls.
We had a maintenance man in last week to fix a few items in our home. His primary approach to this task seemed to be telling us that in fact there was nothing wrong with the items in question and that we ought to just live with them. It was kind of like repair therapy. But we finally convinced him that, no, we could not "just ignore" the squealing sound emanating from our buzzer, and he set about making actual repairs.
Because I have not yet managed to find someone who is willing to pay me for sitting at home and watching other people work, I had to head into the office during this process. But I got to be involved, anyway, because my sister kept me updated with frequent calls.
"Can you come back home? I locked myself out," she asked. "The maintenance guy wanted to look at the air conditioner on the roof and when we came back I realized I didn't have my keys."
Then, before I could get out the door came the second call.
"Never mind, we got in," she informed me. "The maintenance guy just kind of jimmied the lock. It took like two seconds."
I wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or very, very much alarmed at this point. Before I could decide I got a third call.
"Oh, by the way, it turned out my keys were in my back pocket, anyway. So we're good."
I've got to start screening my calls.
