Disempowered…
This one is unbelievable.
I take pride in managing my life in a very detailed and organized way. Stuff just doesn’t happen to me out of the blue. I usually see a crisis coming from a mile away.
But not yesterday.
When I pulled into the driveway of the home I’ve been in for now two months, the garage door would not open automatically. I’d experienced this before at my former apartment and just thought we had some temporary radio interference.
So I quaintly entered my house through a side door and quickly observed that the power was off all over the house. My first thought was that it was some localized blackout. I looked through the neighborhood, but could see lit doorbell ringers, so I knew this was isolated to me.
Unfortunately, I do not have the old-fashioned phones which just plug into the wall. I have gone exclusively with the powered cordless phones, so they were of no use. Instead, I had to use my cell phone which was low on battery power to call TXU Energy. So after wading through the voice response and dropping into the proper queue, I waited 30 minutes for a person to answer. Meanwhile, the house darkened all the while. My spirits darkened along with it.
Once I got the non-caring, paid-by-the-hour, is-it-Christmas-yet agent, I began to convey my story. It turns out that they “lost” my orders to disconnect my apartment and connect my house. So I’ve been using energy from someone else’s account and they finally terminated it. Part of me was pretty angry about this since it happened without notification. But in thinking about it, they didn’t know who to contact. Of course, if they could cross-reference with TXU Gas, they might find that I’m happily a customer.
So after much discussion, they concluded that I never called for the disconnect/connect. Of course, that infuriated me since I successfully turned on my gas, water, DSL, and phone service. Its doubtful that I would have forgotten my electricity. But there didn’t seem to be anyone who really cared on the other end of the phone.
And now the bad news. In order to establish a “new” service, there is lead time. And that lead time is three days! So I’m staying in a hotel for four nights until Monday when hopefully my power will be turned back on.
Never before have I felt so disempowered (pun intended). It was not my mistake. And thankfully, I had no major party plans or arriving family for the weekend. I really feel like our technology and control systems should have evolved to the point where turning the power off and on only takes a flip of a switch. Isn’t that what happens at the micro-level within my house? Why is the macro model so different? I think I will never have answers to those questions.
Now here’s the semi-amusing part of the story. When I arrived at my house, I had about three hours to spare before my evening plans. And these plans were with someone I was to meet for the first time. So as I decided that my only option was a hotel room, I quickly packed some clothes for the evening and the next day. I did so in the darkness with a flashlight. Unfortunately, when I arrived at the hotel, the slacks that I chose did not match and I was forced to dress down for the occasion. For what its worth, it all worked out okay in the end. I had a nice time and returned home…to my hotel.