The landline SAGA

What is wrong with this picture??

This is NOT a Telkom line – that is what!

I have been trying to get Telkom to install a landline for almost three months now. I’m all paid up and every time there is something else. Either the lady I give the keys to has left for the day (since she is at the letting office on the premises) or Telkom arrive at 16h30 on Friday and get sent away because I did not inform security or they arrive at 17h15 on a Thursday, find someone at the letting office, but they are not the person I gave the keys to and they do not know that someone there has the keys in their possession, or, when they finally do get to enter the flat (by special arrangement on a Saturday), tell me there is no “pull line” for them to pull the line through to the flat.

The order of the above was slightly different, but Telkom has been to Palm Springs for me three times now and I’m a) getting anxious to have the line installed and b) worried that they will refuse to come again.

I have just about had it with relying on people to either appear during normal office hours or at leas informing someone else if they are unable to be around.

The age old tenet does apply, like always: if you want something done, you have to do it yourself!

Apart from the fact that the person at the letting office does not seem to talk to her colleagues, she fails to inform me that the builders were going to fix the crack in the ceiling where cement has been falling through for the whole time I have been in the flat. So, she just lets them into my mess with a wedding dress lying on the floor and nothing in any state that could have been deemed decent. I knew they were coming the one day to check out the problem, but not the second time. So, clearly the letting office should have known that there was a key there somewhere, but I know how these things go: assumption is the mother of all stuff-ups!

For those of you who have been reading this and going: what is she on about – it’s just a telephone line….. Yes, that may be true, but it’s not about the line it’s about the underlying principles of communication, communication and communication! I am so looking forward to the day when excellence and trust and keeping your word are not something that we need to worry about, the day when telephones will be obsolete and we do not need to worry about the cost of long-distance communication on cell phones. Man that will be so awesome. That will also be the day when people cannot disappoint you any longer and bring that well of fury inside to the boil that you want to explode.

I suppose there are bigger lessons to be learned here, are there not? The lesson that all this is temporary and that the way we react to things is more important than the thing itself. I did really not handle this very well, and in God’s Grace, no one answered the phone when I tried to call back, because I think I would not have handled the situation in a very godly manner. It’s amazing how we get ruled by our emotions and cannot see beyond the here and now, when there is so much more to look at and forward to.