It Take A Second To Wreck It.

I'm sitting here looking at a fax received yesterday from Columbia Gas. A client had brought her shut-off information to me in the early afternoon, we looked it over together, I called the gas company, they sent me the fax that I'm currently perplexed by. OCS had put a $50 pledge onto this client's account, shortly after I spoke with her. I had her contact the Salvation Army in Wellington for the other $50 pledge she would need for her gas to be turned back on, which the urgency in her face told me should would do at the next available opportunity, which was the next morning. Everything should have been hunky-dorey; this fax says that the shut-off date is 10/29/04.

Plenty of time to get the crinks worked out. Turn-around time should be a day at most, so all is good.

This client awoke this morning to a cold house, cold baby formula, cold water, panic, panic. Enraged I call Columbia Gas. The nasal sounding woman at the end of so many miles of telephone wire (that I had thought to use as a strangulation device) just barking out the same meaningless bits of data to me, "yes well the heat season date isn't actually until November so we go by the first trip date and not the second trip date until the heat season is in effect so that's actually why the shut off date was the 19th and not the 29th OK." I am bewildered by her Kafka-esque attempt to confound my logic. I shook off her string of filibuster. "The date on the form that YOU sent to me says 10/29/04. This is a form that came from YOUR office, please explain to me why her gas was shut off today." A pause. A heavy sigh. I will win in the war of wills, you can sigh at me all you like. "Yes you see the heat season date is in Nov.." to which I interject, "no, this form that I'm holding doesn't say anything about a heat season date. It doesn't say anything about a first and second trip date. It says Shut-off date, October Twenty-Ninth, Two Thousand Four. This is what we're going by. This is all that we have to go by. I have never heard of a heat season date, nor a trip date, nor is there any indication on the information that you sent to me that I SHOULD be concerned about these tertiary dates."

She is frustrated with me, and I her.

I envision the client with her three children (one infant) huddled under a blanket. It's going to be cold tonight.

"The soonest we can get out there to turn the gas back on is tomorrow morning. We will waive the reconnect fee."

"Okay," I say with sarcasm that I'm sure wasn't lost on her, "so you're waiving the reconnect fee for the erroneous disconnection. I will follow up with my client tomorrow morning at 10 am to make sure that the gas is on."

I had elicited a reaction and she huffily hung up the phone. I tell myself that it wasn't my intention to make her feel bad, but I know that my knee-jerk got the best of me. You can't screw around with things like heat, it's freezing outside, none of this should have happened. I feel like the apes in the beginning of 2001, banging whatever bones I can find against the unsensing monolith. Perhaps this is a tad hyperbolic. But, in my gut I believe that we exist because of each other. You don't do a wrong to another without also doing a wrong to yourself. You don't dismiss someone else's emergency heat situation as unimportant without killing yourself a little,too.

Tomorrow I will hang my six-shooters over my desk. I hope that vigilante case work is not the rule of the road.