Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Do I have to not fix everything around here?

After sleeping for 15 hours (man, was I tired and sick), I dragged myself out of bed and through the shower to my appointment at the Genius Bar, i.e. the tech support at the fancy Apple Store in Chelsea. You see, my computer had died the night before - in that most enviable way of simply going to sleep and never waking back up. And all of my grades were trapped inside. And let me tell you, babies, this was one of those times - probably the only time - that the problem was solved with a simple ctrl+alt+caps lock+power button. Boom, back to life. Grades saved.
"You should probably back up, though."
"Yes. Yes, I will."

Then I went home, only to smell gas in the hallway of my decrepit apartment building. I called the landlord and he was only mildly interested.
"We took care of that this morning."
"Well, apparently not, because the smell is back, and it's really strong."
"Ok, I'll send the super around again."
"Look, I don't know how to say this, but I've met the super, and... I'm just gonna call ConEd."
Which I did, and of course they asked me to wait outside the building for 45 minutes to let them in, and then I had to walk around with the guy while he used his EKG meter to detect dangerous fumes (oh by the way, at this point of course the smell is completely gone), and then after the shift change let a second ConEd guy in to do the same, at which point I snapped and said "Look, I have a paper to write. Here's my landlord's number. He's really the one who should be dealing with this. I don't know whether there was a fuel delivery today, or whether something has been done to the boiler. I don't know if the businesses downstairs use gas, or where the meters are, and I can't let you in to anyone's suite. Can you please just call him?"
"Whoa, okay lady, alright."

Sigh.

3 comments:

Chris said...

Fix Fail

Christian said...

If that had been a PC fail instead of a Mac fail then this would have been an uproarious post about how unfriendly and counterintuitive Windows is and how it's simply programed to screw with the user with malevolence, even though the fix would have been just as easy.

M said...

Sure - step one: reformat hard drive. Easy.