Mr. Electric and Me

Yesterday we had an electrician out to fix a light bulb in our over-the-sink light fixture. We had such bad luck “fixing” the garbage disposal ourselves last week that we thought we’d save ourselves the hours of confusion and risk of electric shock and call a Trained Professional.

Me on the phone with Mr. Electric, “Hi. Our light isn’t working over the sink. We tried changing the light bulb but it doesn’t work.”

Mr. Electric, “You want us to come change the light bulb?”

Me: “No, it’s changed. It’s just not working.”

(A moment of silence during which the woman must have been smirking with haughty superiority.)

Mr. Electric: “We’ll be there between 10 and 12 on Monday.”

Excellent, I thought. Little did I know that when Monday arrived, the venerable Mr. Electric and I would be slightly at odds, like how you feel about the kid selling magazines door-to-door whom you are trying really, really hard to like but in the end just want to stuff a sock in his mouth and shove him down the stairs. First off, Billy—let’s just call him Billy, presumably Electric is his surname—arrived at 9:43 a.m., seventeen minutes before the said arrival time. Translation: me in my towel singing Broadway. After I heard his forceful knock at the front door, I scurried to dress and wipe the wet hair out of my face before he rang the doorbell and woke Drew up from his nap. This I accomplished, miracle of miracles. (I looked like a wet Chinese crested from the neck up, and a sad “before” story from Not To Wear from the neck down.)

I was charmed by how the electrician put a Mr. Electric mat down over top of my front porch mat. A mat for my mat! This was high class. He introduced himself— Billy, we’ll call him--and put on little blue hospital booties like the kind we wear in the infant nursery at church. He padded through my living room like it was a biohazardous wasteland and honed in on the wayward light bulb in the kitchen, as if able to sense electrical miscreants. Or maybe his report sheet said something like, “change light bulb in idiot’s kitchen”.

He then began to talk. A lot. He had an otherwise endearing feature of speech that made all of his “v’s” sound like “b’s”. As in, “I will tell you what your inboice will be but I hab to look first.” He brought out a three-ring notebook the size of a Shakespeare anthology, telling me his intentions were to walk me through all that made Mr. Electric a different kind of electric company. As if he were trying to sell me on his services. As if he wasn’t already standing in my kitchen, under a defunct kitchen light bulb, next to a woman just about begging him to fix it so she can pay him real, green money. He was earnest, though, so I feigned patience.

“We do drug tests on all ob our employees,” he began, starting confidently. “We don’t hire felons, just maybe people with some parking biolations, but who don’t hab parking biolations?” I was glad to know I hadn’t allowed a felon into my house, just perhaps his getaway driver who had ignored a parking meter.

He turned the plastic page. “We only use new materials, nothing used. All new.” Again, glad Mr. Electric was on the up-and-up, not jacking parts from clients and circulating them around town.

“We guarantee our work so you won’t hab to call us out to fix it again, or keep habing the same problem.” Glad they were willing to stand by the bold promise to fix something if I pay them money. I mean, who DOES that?

“All ob our electricians are insured for one million dollars, so if something happens, you don’t get sued.” Fair enough. He continued, “All you gotta do is call 9-1-1 in case of an emergency.” Such responsibility left me daunted. Perhaps I really didn’t need the luxury of illumination over my dirty dishes.

Billy turned another page. “All ob our work is insured for two million dollars, so if something happens, you are cobered.” Mr. Electric apparently insures your stuff for more than their people.

And I kid you not, ten minutes later Billy was still trying to sell me on the advantages of calling Mr. Electric to come meet any of my electrical needs. Some marketing wonk thought their electricians needed to double as direct marketing salespeople whenever they made house calls. I trusted that Billy was better with electricity itself than all of the statesmanship surrounding it. I mean, who did they expect him to be? Benjamin Franklin? We finally got around to the problem at hand, which was the Rhodes Family’s inability to properly change a light bulb, but Billy wanted to discuss the dilemma at length.

“Now, I can look up at it, see what is the deal. Troubleshooting will be $138.50. Sometimes it’s cheaper to just replace the fixture. You want me to replace it?”

Um, nope, just see if I screwed the light bulb in tight enough.

I said, “Can you just look up there real quick and see if it will be a quick fix?” Then I flashed him my megawatt smile. (thank you, People magazine, for the term “megawatt smile.”)

“Yes ma’am, but it might be more to do that than just replace the fixture.”
“How much is replacing the fixture?”
“$115.00”
“But that doesn’t include the price of the hardware, just labor, right?”
“Right.” I computed the time and money of schlepping Drew over to Home Depot, picking out an identical light fixture for $80 (which I would probably have to order online because they wouldn’t have it in stock) and having Mr. Electric come out yet again three months later (once the fixture arrived after backorder) with their fancy doormats and blue booties to replace an entire light fixture when all it probably needed was a good whack with a monkey wrench. And I’d have to sit through another ra-ra notebook festivity.

“Let’s just look up there real quick and see if it’s a quick fix,” I said, restating my earlier wishes with a little wink, as if he and I were above all of this silly corporate hairsplitting about the true definition of “troubleshooting”.

“OK. I’ll see what I hab to do.”

I broke away to continue making up my grocery list in the living room. Ten minutes later, Billy summoned me back to ground zero.

“You hab a loose wire in the socket. No big deal. I’ll just charge you $115 and fix it for you. Pretend I didn’t hab to troubleshoot.”

Wow, what a guy!

Ten minutes after that, Drew woke up and I was attempting to get a miniature polo shirt over his 75th percentile-sized head when I learned from Billy that an overall home safety and maintenance check came standard with my $115.00 inboice. OK, I thought. Ever the Irish mamma, I was going to get my money’s worth.

Twenty minutes after THAT, it was about time for me to fix lunch and Drew was making frantic signals for his milk, which was in the kitchen next to the Mr. Electric Central Command that had sprouted there. Notebooks, tools, a ladder, and paper, paper, paper everywhere. Billy was reviewing a giant check-off sheet that said where our house had passed—or failed—Mr. Electric’s bar of safety. “I hab here your results. You failed with the smoke detectors—need them in ebery room ‘cause by the time you smell the smoke from the baby’s room it might be too late and you don’t want that.” Cheery thought. He continued, “I also recommend getting a power surge protector in case of a storm. A surge could take out all your appliances, like your TV, your refrigerator, your dishwasher, microwabe…” as he continued naming the vast litany of possible appliance failures, I felt like doing something really evil with the pen he was holding. “Just sign here to say that I hab gone ober this with you.”

By the time I signed my name it wouldn’t have mattered if it were the most recent stimulus package from Congress, I wanted Billy and his booties and his loose wires gone! Gone far away! But wait, was my light fixture actually working? I asked Billy.

“You gotta ‘nother light bulb? This one is burned out.” WHAT? My heart about burst open. Was he telling me we had put in a burned out light bulb up there and that was the reason for the trouble?

He laughed, comprehending how ludicrous that scenario would be. “Nah, it got burned out by the loose wire, like I said. It will be Ok. Just need a new bulb.”

It turns out I didn’t have another light bulb. I dug all through the wall-o-junk in our laundry room that had objects like glue gun refill sticks, Brita refill filters, shoelaces and liter fluid, all the while Drew hot on my heels like a wolf. Fresh outta light bulbs.

“Maybe you have one from another light somewhere we can use?” By this time Drew was whining, reaching up with his little dimpled hands for mommy and the daily life-giving event we call lunch. I went and unscrewed the office light bulb and presented it to Billy like a rare medicine plant. “I hope it works,” I said.

Ten minutes after THAT, I had a working sink light. It glowed like a lighthouse amidst a chaotic whorl of wind and sea.

Billy began packing his many things, but stopped and asked, “Does your husband like motorcycles?” Oh my goodness, had I died and gone to the scary place?

“Um, well, my dad does,” I said over Drew’s protests, wondering why I had answered so calmly.

“We gotta charity event here in Fort Worth. Don’t know much about it—don’t like motorcycles myself—but if you wanna check it out, you can.” He handed me a flyer, went silent, and I thought he had just made his best sales pitch of the day.

I can’t remember what time Billy finally left my house after fixing my light fixture. I believe it was Tuesday, sometime. But as he turned on his heels and lifted the Mr. Electric mat off of the front porch, he looked up and said, “I gotta two week old at home. Don’t get much sleep.” My heart began to swell up a little, like a bee had stung it. That might explain a lot about today, I thought guiltily. I hoped he had not been sensing my frustration, but I’m pretty sure it was radioactive at that point.

“Kids are great,” I said sincerely. “So worth it.”

He left, and I was relieved. The day was back in my court, ready for my next move. I wondered for a fitful moment if something else would go wrong at my house, because in the Rhodes Family, things always happen in threes. Ah well, I thought.
No big deal. I have a backup plan in the works for such states of emergency I am unable to handle on my own. By the way, anybody got the number to the White House?

Comments

[tenille]

You are hilarious! I mean, that man sounds really humorous anyway -- but the way you tell the story is perfect. I read it outloud to Casey just now. :)