December 14, 2006 by Amy

Selective disgust

I’ve decided that when it comes to harboring ill feelings towards our local power company, one needs to be quite selective.

The linemen and linewomen who have worked on our house have been fantastic. They are the nicest people, usually with fantastic senses of humor, and you can tell they’re doing their best and working their hardest to get everyone restored. These are good people who have their own families, many of whom I’m sure also lost power. They’ve always been friendly and genial, and have taken time to explain what the issue is and how they solved it. One of these folks was at our house this morning, and has restored our power to it’s normal state, thereby ensuring we won’t blow up appliances or our HVAC system when we plug them in. Thank you, un-named Ameren worker!

The people on the phone have also been friendly, and it’s not their fault that they haven’t been properly trained to answer questions from stressed customers who can’t understand why their homes have lost power a bajillion times in the five short years they’ve lived there.

The engineers we’ve dealt with (or rather, who my MIL has dealt with), have been very nice people as well, according to her.

This leaves the Ameren muckity-mucks, who I’ve had absolutely no contact with except to see them on TV claiming that the company’s decision to cut tree-trimming services has nothing to do with widespread power outages. Considering that I can look out my windows and see tree branches interfering with the power lines, I think they are full of bovine excrement. It’s pretty easy to sit in your gigantic, electrified home (with either buried power lines running to it, or no trees in sight) and decide that the budget numbers will look infinitely better (thereby raising your bonus) if the tree trimming line item is cut.

Since I must choose someone to be disgusted with, I choose them.

These are also the same idiots who have decided, in their infinite wisdom, to announce that they are hiking rates (since the government-mandated rate freeze is expiring) 55%.

I’m not worried about this rate hike, because it won’t affect me seeing as how most of the time I do not have power anyway.