The Joys of Dealing with Modern Power

Yesterday afternoon the sky turned black and the wind started to howl. Then the power went out. We were headed off the Smiths Falls for the evening in any case. Got home at about 11:00 pm—and the village is pitch-black. We stumble around in the dark, find working flashlights, and phone Ontario’s version of electricity providers. (I can never remember what they are calling themselves this month.) First they inform us that there are two accounts associated with our phone number. Though we’ve owned this place for 9 years some providers still have the previous owners on record. Can we please provide the correct account number? Huh? Everything is done electronically these days and…we have no power for computers.

Then the helpful voice wants to know our closest cross-street. There isn’t any. Are you close to highway 42 he wants to know. We live on highway 42.  “I have you down as living on Drummond Street.” Drummond Street is highway 42. We repeat this exercise a few times before he gives up on us primitives who don’t know where we live. We repeat that the entire village has no power. Is that not good enough for them to locate the outage? Next he wants to know if we have “reset” our power. “Reset?” Yes, he says. Go down to the basement and pull the main power switch. “Why?” To “reset” it. This is the first time that I heard that electricity is like a wireless router or a computer that can be “reset” with a power cycle. We refuse to do that.

So what do we want? We want to know when power will be restored. He informs us that the expected event is 3:00 am. Even though he can’t locate an outage that involves an entire village without us telling him what our “cross-street” is, and recommends that we power-cycle our main power switch he seems to know a lot of details all of a sudden. He promised to call us if that changes. Please don’t, we ask. We plan to be asleep at 3:00 am. We go to bed and read by flashlight until falling asleep. The power comes back on shortly after 3:00 am. (We know this because the TV wakes us up.) At 3:30 the phone rings. We don’t answer it. Next morning there is a phone message from Ontario sometime-electricity providers informing us that our power has been restored.

I am aware that there are people with less than average intelligence in the world, but why is it that they seem to be the only people that public utilities hire?