On Maine Time

"Waiting for the Plumber on the Maine Coast" by Salvador Dali

While living in Maine is great, at the same time it sucks in a couple of key ways, the worst being a lack of professionalism that permeates most business dealings. Case in point: the installation of our new furnace. They said they would arrive at 7:30 AM. They didn't.

At 8:20 I called the home office. A recording told me I was "the third caller in the queue." Finally a lady came on and and asked for my phone number. I gave it. "Hmmm," she said. Then she asked for my address. She still could not find anything about us. Finally she asked for my name, which amazingly netted the result she sought. "Why not ask for that first?" I inquired. "Our system isn't set up that way," she explained.

Next she said I should hold "for a second." After about five minutes there was a definite dead quality to the line. I had been disconnected. So I called back and went through it all again, only this time I was far less cheery. The same lady said she would put me through to the right person to see what was going on. Great. That person asked for my phone number, then my address, and then my name -- that's quite a system they have -- and said I would be connected to someone who "knows about all of it." Next thing I know, I'm hearing a recording of Know-it-all saying she's out of the office and to please leave a message.

As I was hurling some choice suggestions at Know-it-all's voice mail, there was a knock on our front door. By now it was 8:45. It was the furnace guy. A nice enough chap, he said nobody had told him to get here at any particular time, certainly not at 7:30, and if we were going to have an attitude about it he would go on to his next appointment and not do the job at all. "I can't work like this," he said. I placated him by saying that both my husband and I are crazy. He agreed to stay.

Just so you know in case you move here and need some work done, this is fairly typical.