Queen of the Universe

I would like to apologize to the Queen of the Universe.  She is the superviser to a herd of Sears Customer Service People whose job it is to schedule appliance repair visits.

At 8 AM, precisely, on Monday morning -- otherwise known, in the intimacy of blogging circles, as yesterday, I called the Sears Customer Service Center to beg for a refrigerator repair visit, as we had spent the previous day watching our frozen goods begin to melt.

It was clear from the get-go that we weren't in Tête de Hergé anymore, and Kansas wasn't on the horizon, either.  In fact, judging by the accents haranguing their way through the ear piece, I am pretty sure we were somewhere in IndoChina.

Why do I say "I cannot HEAR you" when I really mean "I cannot UNDERSTAND you"?

Yes, Professor Polyglot, herself, is prone to xenophobic rants.  I believe I snickered when the woman helping me declared that my warm and thawing food "was a good reason to call for a repair." I might have said:  "Why, thanks.  We think it is a good reason, too."

After not being able to HEAR her for several minutes, I was finally able to express my deep woe about expensive meats and ridiculous ice creams, and the red neon dollar signs flashing on the inside of my eyelids, just like the church sign on our corner back in Oakland, the reds splashing onto the bright pink stucco of the church building proper, hugging Telegraph Avenue.

One night, the first night after The Great American Novelist Slash Poet divulged his infidelity -- which I mistakenly heard as being a matter of womanly flesh, and not his masturbatory reflexive need for simpering praise -- I walked down our city street in a thin nightgown, and sat on the bench across the street from the pink church with the red neon sign.

But when the bus stopped in front of me, I did not get on. When I climbed back into bed, he had not noticed I was gone.

After settling in with one another, adjusting volumes, accents, and accentuations, the Customer Service Rep and I became a tight mutual admiration society, and I hung up after thanking my newfound SisterBuddyGirl profusely, secure in the knowledge that sometime between noon and 5 PM, we could pack up our troubles in our old kit bag... 

And smile, smile, smile,
While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that’s the style.
What’s the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.

I wasn't sure when exactly it had happened, but I was pretty sure I'd also agreed to purchase an Extended Manor Warranty (18 months for the price of 24!) and a Free Medieval Manor Kitchen Make-Over Estimate.

Fred and I relaxed a bit, stewardship duties seemingly taken care of... and pretty gosh-darned well, we thought: ManorFest practically running itself; the Moat algae-free; Cabana Boy properly refocussed on his duties; and even our new alarm system, based on Sour Old Wolf Urine, is working seamlessly -- no further intruders, no return visits from the original intrepid duo, just to say hi, or see if Hassan ever showed up. And now, sometime between one and five, even our frozen food would be in its ideal state.

Ducks in a row, ducks in a row!

It was a little over 100 degrees here yesterday, and even though I was not out in it, I felt the effect on my nerves.

As 5 o'clock approached, I thought it wise to give my Very Best SisterBuddyGirl a call, because no repair person had shown up and while the heat was only doing a number on my nerves, it was having a different impact upon a bloody mess of domesticated pork roasts, wild boar cheeks, tilapia, MoatMonster Fish, boneless, skinless chicken breasts, ground turkey, and six prefab turduckens...

Well, oddly enough, it seems my new friend has to share some of her equipment at work, I guess, because someone else answered my phone call (though I still sparred with Mr. Computer Voice at the beginning. Patriarchal jackass, he says shit like: "Answer yes or no... just yes or no... you say something besides yes or no, you'd better remember that I know where you live...")

Anyway, I explained things.  New Person On The Other End interrupted me.

"Oh, I am so sorry that happened to you!"

Not a good start.

For several reasons.

I decided to stay in the realm of the uplifting and positive, asking how quickly she thought she could get someone out to The Manor, hmmm?

{Cough::Cough} on the other end.  "I see here that we tried to call you and leave a message but we were disconnected.  Yes, that's what I read here, in these notes."

Astonishingly, I replied:  "Oh no you di'int."

In this age of Caller ID and redundant captures of every bit of communication, why lie about a phone call?  I mean, really?  Is that step number 171 of Grooming Customers For Fleecing?

Fred loves to tell people that he can dress me up but can't take me anywhere, which somehow is a critique of my People Skills.  Given that dressing myself at all, much less dressing up, is quite the accomplishment some days, the jocularity of this expression is lost on me.

It was just about then -- then being perhaps 5:15 PM -- that I invited Fred to join us on the phone, hoping to freshen the rapidly souring meeting-of-the-minds. 

And so it came to pass that at roughly 5:16 PM,  having determined the lay of the land and the hopelessness of the conversation, Fred first uttered those fateful words:

MAY I SPEAK TO YOUR SUPERVISOR, PLEASE?

I giggled as we were immediately switched to elevator music and the periodic notification that our call would be answered in the order it was received... yes, we had been kicked back out into the roiling plebian waters.  The patricians at the Customer Service Center had spoken, as only patricians are able.

I was in the process of letting mine fingers do the walking, discovering how strange it felt to even touch a phonebook after using nothing but computers for so long, and when did my fingers get so huge?  Just about to randomly pick from the ads all promising same-day responses for hardly any money at all, my finger was stayed by the arrival of a crisp female voice from Sears.

Fred did the talking, initially.  "Are you a supervisor?" he asked, all pleasant and reasonable sounding.

"Sir, I need to determine who you are, first..." Whoa!  But okay, Fred jumped through her hoops with names, screen names, stage names, and pseudonyms, address, zip, phone numbers, and third pet of his biological mother's Uncle Jorge. 

She was hanging with him until the discovery that he did not share my easy 4-letter surname, but had the gall of one of his own, and long, at 11-letters.  I think she was considering a claim that our refrigerator troubles must be due to the Sears Repair Call having been arranged by me and my short, easy name, when all the while there was a long, multi-syllabic, ethnic-sounding name hanging about, confusing things.
It was now just after 5:30 PM.

I got back on the phone to repeat Fred's insightful initial inquiry:  "Are you a supervisor?"

Her sharp, offended intake of air was audible.

"Ma'am, I am at the Upper Echelon of Management."  My ears weren't even sure what letters to capitalize, they were so chastened.

I do know that if she had not decided to repeat that stunner of a phrase, Fred and I would not have burst into synchronized, hysterical peals of laughter.  It was kind of like the unmentioned follow up to "shock and awe" -- Shock, Awe, and The Giggles.

Too late, we couldn't get those giggles back.  That's when she told us that the next available date for a service visit to our area of Tête de Hergé was Thursday, 5 August.  In response to my imitation of a dying seal pup, she raised her hakapuk in menace and added this explanation:

"You are not the only people experiencing difficulty and we already worked you in once as an emergency..." [The part about them not showing up for their own appointment eluded her...]

I said, "Can I speak to YOUR supervisor, please?" and Fred wandered into the kitchen in question and began pulling out all available roasting pans and casserole dishes, stoking the fire, setting out spices... we had a mess of meat to cook, we were on the phone with an egotistical idiot, so we'd better get started.

There were two more Upper Echelon declarations and an explanatory, "There is no one higher;  There is no one more senior than me." Fred and I swapped places so that I could season the meat he had apportioned among the cookware.  Seamlessly, he picked up the phone and said:

"Who signs your paycheck?"

He said she sputtered.  I believe him.  Finally, she averred that one René Gabonne {couldyouspellthatplease?} signed her paychecks but that we could not talk to him.  "He has no phone, then?" says My Darling.

Zing!  Zip!  Back on hold! 

We put the phones on intercom, and used the recess to load all the meat into various ovens, trying to get a sense for when one roast would be ready and whether any wanted basting... both of us wishing we could pull the Domestic Staff off of the evening ManorFest activities -- but, you know, that's when we really rake in the big Tête de Hergé dough with ManorFireworks, ManorFood, etcetera.

The Scullery Maid came up with the We'll Fry Anything ManorBooth, which has brought in more money than all the animal husbandry displays together.  People can bring any food item they desire, so long as it is in some form of original packaging, and we will batter and fry it, no questions asked.  How does that celebrate Manor Life?  Hell if I know, but it's a hoot.  We even offer a Tempura Option, and a choice of oils, including some Finishing Oils used basically as delicate perfumes.

It was now after 6 PM, but we had food on the fires, inside as well as outside Marlinspike Hall, the heat was tempered now by soft breezes and beer -- and our phones sputtered back to life.

Markedly different, our Huffy Little Supervisor let us know that Our Call May Be Monitored For Quality Control Purposes (Fred and I waved silent howdies to René Gabonne!) and asked if we had any "extenuating circumstances that would make a visit by our refrigeration technician a true emergency, such as medication requiring cooling or small children in the home..." -- to which Fred cried, "Yes!"

"Yes, what, sir?"

"Yes, to both!  We have insulin that needs a fridge and I see small children running around everywhere!" cooed and lied My Guy.  {True, we have insulin -- although it does okay without the fridge -- but none of the children were exactly ours...}

And thus it was that The Queen of the Universe and Supervisor of the Upper Echelon gifted us with a second date with The Repairman, scheduled for today, between -- of course -- noon and 5 PM.

We felt great remorse after our encounter.  We should not have laughed at her, for the Universe needs its Queen and the Upper Echelon clearly cannot manage itself.

The Repair Technician came promptly at 1 PM this afternoon, pronounced our cooling unit to have an ailing relay switch, replaced the sucker, and was out of here by a quarter after.  The cost of his visit?  A frigid $319, of which $285 was for labor. 

It took me a few minutes to realize that that tinny, repeating sound was her, laughing.