My life long habit has been to arise long before the sun and peruse the perimeter . Recently that perusal of the perimeter caught a shiny glint on my front lawn . It was the moon shining off the water that filled the swale in front of my Florida home.
Water filled swales in Florida are generally a sure sign that intense rain has occurred and surely intense enough to awaken a light sleeper like me… which it did not . Turns out a broken water main was the culprit as three feet of bubbling water was erupting from a lawn across the street. I made the call to our local water company only to get the response of …….
” If you want to pay your bill , press 1 …. if this is an emergency, press 2 ” .
Pressing 2 brought another recording which repeated ….
” If you want to pay your bill , press 1 …. if this is an emergency, press 2 ” . The second press of 2 brought a three minute diatribe of the above in the Spanish language before a human came to the phone .
” Is this an emergency ? ” she asked, to which I explained that water was erupting from the ground and the entire street is flooded .
” I’m an on call answering service Sir , and will inform them as soon as the office is open .”
We came home from work that day to witness the the repair crew finishing up . And like all work projects in our Charlotte County, we came home from work two days later to witness the repair crew finishing up the redo of what they didn’t get right the first time …
as usual… we do it right, because we do it twice …. because we have to.
