What part of "I don't have it" did he not understand?

If there is anything worse than a complacent civil servant, it is the witless customer service rep whose mind is incapable of thinking beyond the narrow confines of his ordinary job.

This morning my power went off and, after checking my DB board to make sure it wasn’t a problem with the house, I called my local power utility.

“I live in Table View and my power just went off,” I said.

“What is your account number?” he asks me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “My husband pays the bills, he is out of town, and I don’t know where he keeps that stuff. But I live in Table View…are there any outages here?”

“I can’t tell you that without your account number,” he drones. Honest to God, the man had no inflection in his voice!

“I told you, I don’t have it, but I can tell you my street address…”

“I can’t locate you without your account number,” he tells me. Right…Table View is this tiny little remote village that cannot be located without a multi-digit number to which I have no access…NOT!

“I can give you my street address,” I repeat helpfully. Ya know, when my tenant was trying to get her power turned on, they demanded a street address which, once they received it, they promptly told her was non-existent! What is going on with these people? My husband works for the same company and, believe me, there are plenty of really, really smart people working there. Maybe they refuse to hire intelligent people for the customer service area like the telephone company in America that told me I had scored too high on their test and was therefore too smart to be a directory service operator.

Anyway, this drone continued to demand my account number which, inevitably, pissed me off. And, contrary to my normal behaviour with anyone, service people in particular, I shouted at him. “I DO NOT HAVE IT!” I yelled. “I have a street address! My husband is out of town! I don’t have access to his papers! My power is out! Now if you can’t help me, let me speak to your supervisor!”

He put me on hold for a mercifully short period of time, then returned to say his supervisor was on another line, but if I would leave my telephone number, she would call me back within five minutes. Yeah, right. But I gave him the number anyway. About 15 minutes ago. I’m still waiting for her to call me back…

…and the power is back on.