Anyone Have Some Ketchup?

“Mom what should I do?” was the question my oldest cub tossed my way last Thursday evening. Her dilemma, you ask? Apparently the water was shut off to my other house. No no no, this was not my fault. The older cubs and my son’s girlfriend all live in our house in town. Officially, they rent from us and are responsible for their own utilities.

To say I was dismayed is an understatement. Yet, I wasn’t surprised. For years I have lamented the financial irresponsibility of my oldest cub, and this appeared to be one more example of her being an utter twit.

According to her, they came home on Tuesday to find themselves waterless. They searched high and low for their latest bill and/or a disconnection notice and couldn’t find anything. Uh huh – the water company doesn’t just opt to randomly choose a victim to harass. I pointed this out to her, and she argued vehemently that they were never notified.

On Wednesday, she paid the bill via her debit card and was told someone would be out first thing Thursday morning to flip the switch. It had to wait until then or she’d be paying an extra hundred bucks for the privilege of having water instantly. Harsh? Perhaps, but I was thinking it was going to be a lesson learned for the mistake she made.

By Thursday evening she was frazzled. Nobody showed up to get the toilets flushing, the showers running, and the sinks spewing. She called them and was told they had no record of her water being shut off, therefore, nobody was coming to turn it on. WTF? She’d called her bank and the $300 the water company told her she owed had been taken from her account. In a nutshell, they took her money, but seem to have lost the order to shut off or turn on her water.

Does it sound fishy to you? It did to me. I just knew I was being fed a line of bullshit from the kid, but she was adamant about it all. Now she wanted to know what to do.

My advice? “Pay your bill on time next month and you won’t be dealing with this!”

I am eating crow and it doesn’t taste very pleasant.

The next day I called to see if things had been straightened out. It would seem the water company did make a mistake and opted to randomly harass a paying customer. They’d turned off the wrong house! That’s why the woman couldn’t find a shut off order and refused to send someone to turn it back on. The kids had paid their bill on time – they were paid in full.

Now, they are getting a month free due to the company messing up.

Pass me a fork, please? Oh, and some sea salt and pepper would be nice – crow really does taste like crap!

Peace