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Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Story 113: Hey It's the cable guy





I used to live in Queens, New York, and back then for a period of a year and half I had free cable.  I really didn't feel guilty because the cable company had forgotten to turn my basic cable off.  It wasn't like I had every channel, or was actively stealing it as some of my neighbors were doing. They had splitters so they could access another neighbors channels. I merely did not complain.

Nowadays, I have seen that some of my friends have Amazon firesticks that are jailbroken.  It's amazing that they have every movie that's out there.  Although I am always worried that someone will arrest me for stealing content if I were to do the same thing.

Anyway back to my cable situation.  How I got the cable was worth discussing.  I don't know how it is in other countries like Brazil or France, but in America if you make an appointment for cable the companies are very vague when you try to schedule an appointment for them to come over to install it.  It goes something like this.

Customer, "When do you think you can install my cable?"

Time Warner Cable, "On Tuesday between 9 and 5."

Customer "Can you be more specific I have to take off work."

Time Warner "Sorry, we have to make a lot of calls."

And that's how it went.  They arranged to come over on a Tuesday.  The problem is I that spent all day in my apartment.  I felt like it was a snowy day, and was starting to get cabin fever.  I kept checking the clock and around 3pm began to call the cable company every half an hour to get an update.

Each time I called I got the same answer, "They're on their way."  It reminded of optimum's unmovers commercials but only more real.

Finally I got a call saying that they would be over at 8pm.  The problem is that I have neighbors.  If I had my own house it probably wouldn't be a problem but my next door neighbor Rose had quite a temper.

Rose had been through two husbands and I heard their arguments even over my upstairs neighbor's illegal barking dog.  It got so bad that a few months after my cable was installed Rose had to vacate her place to get away from husband number two.

Meanwhile the cable guys came at 8pm and they started to work on installing, but as you probably know cable involves drilling. Lots and lots of drilling.

After about fifteen minutes Rose knocks on the door and starts to complain about the noise.  I politely tell her they are almost done, but I know in my heart they aren't.

After about another hour or so.  Rose knocks again only this time she is starting to raise her voice above the drilling.  I try to reassure her they are wrapping up.  I apologized, but then I turned to the men and told them to continue.

Unfortunately They didn't finish until 10pm.  Well past the typical time that's considered acceptable.  Rose probably knocked a few more times, but I pretended I didn't hear her. To thank the men I gave them both bottles of alcohol. Although, I was probably a bit stereotypical because I gave the Russian sounding man a bottle of Vodka, and the Spanish guy some coronas.  They left happy. Rose didn't talk to me for a month, but at least I had basic cable.  Long after she moved out of the apartment the free cable continued.

Life Lesson 113:  Sometimes we gotta do, what we gotta do to get what we wanna get, and free cable is always better than no cable even if you have to hear some complaining long after it's a fact.

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