I’m in my fourth day of having all my power and internet service out due to the storm of a few days ago, four days to be exact. It has focused my thinking on how our hold on modern life is amazingly tenuous. I write this from a place I traveled to so I could catch up on email, phone messages, and the general state of the world. A place where the world as I remember it from last week still works.
During the course of this excursion into the past I’ve been in regular communication with PECO, my electric company. When I get out where the world still functions, of course. It’s been an interesting experience and quite the testament to the power of positive people and their ability to keep rabid customers happy…or at least somewhat calm.
First of all, they have a fairly up to date message about what’s going on when you call. It then gives you the opportunity to hear a status report on your own situation and so forth without talking to anyone. But most importantly, it gives you a way to get to a real person easily…with almost instant connection.
Already I’m calmer since I’ve avoided the incomprehensible phone tree sytem of neverending button pushing while trying to find the information you need, or a real person. They’ve taken away my first opportunity to be extremely irritated with them for their negligence in not instantly restoring my power.
When the person answers she is so personable it totally disarms me. She commisserates with me about my situation, explains calmly that everyone is working as hard as they can, mentions that they already know I have a problem, and offers that if all goes well they hope to have me up and running by the 11 tonight. I thank her for her understanding and end my call relieved.
That was two days ago.
Yesterday morning when I got up at 5 to discover that there was still no power I was again in a state of rising irritation. Clearly everything in the refrigerator was now dead, the house was getting colder, and the things I do out of my home office were piling up.
I travel off to the land of today and again reach out to PECO. Again I rapidly reach a pleasant woman, different but equally friendly, disarming, commisserating, and calming. She explains that there are only 30,000 people left without power and they’ve been working on the places where they can fix more lines at once. And I, well, my line only powers me so I unfortunately am at the end of the list. But she really hopes it will be fixed by 11 tonight.
To my later amazement I realize that she calmed me down and I actually thanked her for her compassion with my predicament. I never even got around to complaining that they had said basically the same thing the day before…clearly without fulfilling their words.
As I send this off, I’m again off in the land of today after finding at 5 in the morning that once again, their words were unfullfilled. Need I share my story of the pleasant woman I spoke with this morning? Day four. The list of those living with candles is shrinking. Soon, no doubt by 11 this very night, I shall be among them.
Again I forgot to be annoyed as she soothed the raging beast with her calm and hopeful words.
It’s given me a whole new appreciation of the power of pleasant people. And it’s gotten me wanting to talk to whoever is in charge of the call center at PECO. I want to shake their hand.