I went to college in New Hampshire and married a Nebraska man, so I know what it means to be cold in the winter. I have left my dorm at 11 a.m. and felt my snot freeze instantly because the air was so frigid. (My freshman roommate from Maine had to explain this phenomenon to me.) I have insisted that I wanted to light fire to my body while walking home from a sledding expedition. I have walked outside in heels and stockings in temperatures below 0° because Nathan grimaced when I suggested I might wear a pants suit to his cousin's January wedding.
I know what it means to be cold, and I realize that Pasadena's winter weather does not meet the Midwest's or New England's definition of "Brrrr." But that doesn't mean I'm frolicking outside in my sundress and sandals 365 days a year. Pasadena still gets cold, especially at night. At the beginning and end of the day, our house gets so chilly, even Nathan complains about it.
Fortunately, we installed a new heater about six months ago when we had our air conditioner replaced. Our new heater is pretty bad ass and only needs five or ten minutes to make our house feel cozy again.
Unfortunately, our brand new digital thermostat died on Saturday morning. After it died, slightly cold air kept blowing through our vents. Nathan had to manually unplug the system.
Nathan called the company that installed our new heater/thermostat three times on Saturday. We figured there was an easy fix that could be explained to us over the phone. And three times, a company representative assured us that a technician would call us on Saturday.
It probably goes without saying that it's Monday morning, and we are still waiting for that call from the technician.
Look, I realize this is not an emergency situation. We live in Pasadena, and even though it would be nice to use our brand new heater, we can huddle under blankets and manage just nicely. But holy crap, why did the company rep tell us that someone would call to help us if no one was actually going to call?! Don't lie to us!
Seriously, if Nathan had called on Saturday morning and the company rep had apologized and explained that we needed to call back on Monday, I would have been mildly irritated for about five minutes. Then I would have had some pancakes for breakfast and forgotten my irritation. But instead, we were mislead; so although my pancakes were delicious, I felt surges of irritation all weekend whenever I thought about the stinking lying liars who apparently don't give a crap about customer service.
And what's extra irritating is that we were not misled by a random company. This company did work for us six months ago and for that work, we wrote them a substantial check. Doesn't that deserve a little honesty and some freaking customer service? Don't they want us to recommend their services to our friends and neighbors?
I can't wait to call this company for the fourth time and beg them to fix our brand new thermostat so I can operate our brand new heater for ten lousy minutes. And I know I have to be sweet and pleasant even though I want to be cranky and lawyerly. And after our experiences with this company on Saturday, I am not confident that they will hurry over to fix our brand new thermostat which they installed six months ago. Here's to hoping I am pleasantly surprised.
p.s. Apologies for the formatting/font issues with this post. After I had the audacity to add the degree symbol to the first paragraph, things went crazy. Whenever I tried to make everything normal and uniform, half the sentences turned into Greek, literally.
