Lines Writing Lines

Tuesday: I returned home from vacation and, without delay, went grocery shopping and cooked meals in advance so I could prepare them for dinners in the coming days.

Wednesday: In the middle of preparing my dinner, the gas went out. Damn it. I called the gas company, Paz Gaz (that’s right, English speakers, an Israeli gas company’s name is a euphemism for farting), to order a new canister (ie, “balloon”). They were closed. Naturally. I cooked my dinner in the slow cooker, which takes several times longer than using the stove. Time wasted: one hour.

Thursday:

• early morning – I called Paz Gaz as soon as they opened. The first person who answered the phone told me they weren’t open yet. The second person who answered the phone told me they were too busy and a manager would call me back if I’d leave a phone number. NO!!!!!!!!! So I waited on hold for a while and finally a third person came on and told me that I could not order a new canister until I had an inspection done on my apartment’s gas hookup. I expected this from the last time, so I asked if I could have the inspection done immediately. She said it could be done that very day, but that he’d come any time between 8 am and 4 pm with only 30 minutes notice. Since I work 90 minutes away from my home, that wouldn’t work.

  Fortunately I’m living with a gracious and cooperative roommate now, so I asked the Paz Gaz woman exactly what the inspection entailed, so I could determine if it was something my roommate could supervise or if I’d need to be in the apartment myself. I recognize that the preceding sentence is a little complex, so I’ve italicized it for your benefit. Unfortunately, there was no form of emphasis I could manage to use for the Paz Gaz woman to make her understand it, and she spent the next 45 minutes answering every single other useless and unimportant question on earth that I hadn’t asked. Finally I gave up and just decided to ask my roommate to accommodate the inspector’s schedule.

• mid morning – The gas inspector called to tell me he’d be at my apartment in 20 minutes. I called my roommate to ask her to let him in. She was busy with her own life, but stayed in the apartment to make the gas inspection happen. The inspection went as planned with no problems. He left a document behind stating that everything was fine.
• late morning – I called Paz Gaz to order a new canister. I got to a complete moron who told me that I couldn’t order a new one until the inspection was done. I replied that the inspection had been done already, and she could call the inspector on his mobile phone to confirm it. She told me she couldn’t do that, and that he wouldn’t bring the signed document to the office until Sunday morning, which meant that I couldn’t order a new canister until then and couldn’t have it delivered until Monday at the earliest. I hung up on her.
• early afternoon – I called Paz Gaz to order a new canister. I got to a complete moron who told me that I couldn’t order a new one until the inspection was done. I replied that the inspection had been done already, and she could call the inspector on his mobile phone to confirm it. She told me that she’d call him on his mobile phone and would call me back if I’d leave a phone number. NO!!!!!!!!! She wouldn’t do anything with me on the phone, and wouldn’t give me any way to reach her again, so I hung up on her.
• mid afternoon – I called Paz Gaz to order a new canister. I got to someone who actually seemed to know what she was doing. She told me that I couldn’t order a new one until the inspection was done. I replied that the inspection had been done already, and she could call the inspector on his mobile phone to confirm it. In the mean time, she let me order the canister. I agreed to pay the insane ridiculous fee to have it delivered the following day, Friday. I asked for it to be early in the morning, as early as possible. She said she’d put a note on the order asking for my canister to be delivered between 6 and 7 am.
• late afternoon – I got a call from the inspector. He said that he hadn’t been able to complete the inspection because I didn’t have gas coming into the apartment. I told him that this was complete bullshit, because a) he had in fact completed the inspection, and had left behind a form saying that he had, and because b) the inspection was a prerequisite for ordering gas – so not completing it because there was no gas would make no sense. I told him in any case that c) I had already ordered a gas canister based on his having completed the inspection, so if he wanted, he could come by later on Friday and check it with the gas that, by that time, would already have been delivered. He was insistent that I could not order gas because he had not completed the inspection, and that he could not complete the inspection because there was no gas.
• almost 5 pm – I got a call from the woman who’d taken my order at Paz Gaz. She told me that my gas delivery had been canceled because the inspector had not completed his inspection of my apartment. I repeated to that this made no sense, but she did not care.
• a few minutes before 5 pm – I quickly called my landlord and asked him to call Paz Gaz for me to straighten the issue out. He doesn’t consider this his responsibility, and technically it isn’t, but he did it anyway.
• a few minutes after 5 pm – The landlord called me back and told me that Paz Gaz was closed for the day and that they wouldn’t open until Sunday. Naturally.

  He also wanted to know why I insisted on using Paz Gaz specifically instead of another gas company. I was shocked. I’d always used Paz Gaz because, when signing the lease almost four years ago, he’d told me that it was the gas company for our building and I never knew that I could just go with another gas company. He told me to check out AmIsraGas.

  I called AmIsraGas, but they were closed for the day. Naturally.

• Total time wasted Thursday: probably between three and four hours.

Friday: I called AmIsraGas and asked if I could order a new gas canister from them. The woman who answered told me that I could not, because a) it couldn’t be done without an inspection, and b) I was currently a Paz Gaz customer and AmIsraGas could not sell a gas canister to me. I chose to address her second objection, characterizing it as utterly moronic. She said I’d need to present AmIsraGas with a signed document from Paz Gaz saying that I was allowed to switch companies to AmIsraGas. I offered the following analogy: I once traveled on an Egged bus; was I not allowed to take a Dan bus without an Egged form giving me permission?

She was not amused. I demanded to speak with a manager. She said that the manager was busy, but she’d have him call me back if I’d leave a number. NO!!!!!!!!! I insisted on waiting, but she warned that it could take several hours. I agreed, and she put me on hold. Every five minutes she checked in to see if I still wanted to wait. After almost an hour, I gave up. Time wasted: more than one hour.

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