Monday, February 28, 2011

Bureaucrats at Work

We’ve become a wimpy lot. Yesterday, Sunday, as my wife was showering, the power suddenly failed. It was perhaps 6:30 in the morning, almost light. She quickly finished her shower and we checked outside to determine whether it was us (we do live in an old house, circa 1920, after all) or it was a larger power outage. The stoplight at the end of our street was out, so we assumed something bigger had occurred.


I collected our newspapers and returned indoors, where it was now light enough to get about. My first instinct was to go to our coffee maker to begin preparations for our daily cappuccinos. But no, the espresso machine is electric, as is the normal coffee pot. I could turn on the stove and light a match to get some fire to heat water, but that isn’t how we make our cappuccinos. I stood there thinking, “man, we are so totally reliant on electricity, it’s a bit pathetic.” I suppose we could have gone to Starbucks to get a couple of cappuccinos, but Starbucks doesn’t really make a decent cappuccino. Mine at home are way better than anything they can make. I mean, Starbucks probably makes a totally awesome giganto caramel mocha frappuccino, with extra whipped cream, and chocolate on top, in the 72 ounce cup, but what would I do with that? I mean, nobody actually drinks those things, do they???

So, we stayed at home and awaited the inevitable city fix-it crew. In about an hour, the fix-it crew had the power back on. And I thought, “you rock, guys.” I know you’re just poor, inefficient, lazy, city bureaucrats, sucking up our hard-earned tax dollars (the Republican-Faux News characterization), but I’ll bet no republican banker from Citibank could have fixed the power outage that fast. They would have been sitting in their office, sucking their thumbs.

So, we got our power back, I could make our coffees, and our smoothies, and we could relax again, knowing that there are guys out there who actually work for a living, and who actually know how to fix things.

I wonder what our friendly neighborhood bankers were doing to fix things in their world???

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a great trubute to our City of Concord electric company. So gald we do not have Duke power!