The Devil's Work

I can feel myself slipping into the black mood. It’s like a veil wrapping ‘round me, tangled and thick and very troublesome. We are starting a fourth day of rain and cold, raw temperatures. I’m cabin fevered weary of gray skies and gutters filled with dirty water. And stupidity. Especially stupidity.

It starts with the letter carrier leaving a bundle of mail and a package of photographs tossed indifferently onto the cement of the front porch during a rainstorm. It’s not the first time the lazy, inept and dull witted cow has done this but it’s the first time there were professional photographs in the mix. Through a supervisor, she denies it and I flat out call her a liar and come perilously close to losing my temper. I have a strong sense that this is not the first time someone has complained about her and her supervisor assures me she’ll have a serious sit down with her as soon as she reports to work. Oddly enough, I don’t hear anything further and for some mysterious reason, we receive no mail delivery. When I called to report her, there was a “greater than one hour “ wait time. It told me all I needed to know about the state of the US mail service.

The second war is with the scandal ridden water department. The water pressure crashes unexpectedly and it takes over two hours to reach them. They tell me that they’re unable to reach the service department and give me the number to call directly to see is there’s a water main break in the neighborhood. Another hour and a half of trying to reach the service people and I call the mayor’s office. There, I’m referred back to the water department who – only after I press and press hard – own up to the fact that we’ve been disconnected for non-payment. I suggest that they might’ve shared this information with me when I first called and I can practically hear them shrugging. They’re open until 5:30. so they tell me grudgingly, but when I get there at 5 minutes after 4, they’re closed. Liars and thieves, the whole lot of them, I tell the deputies who refuse to let me in. They’re sympathetic but unmoved.

The next morning I leave early and take care of the water bill. That afternoon we have a new mail carrier who has no trouble locating and using the mail slot. I doubt we’ve turned a corner but it’s possible we’re at least on the right street. I was on my way up and out of the darkness when Michael pointed out to me that the trash hadn’t been picked up the day before. I suggested he likely hadn’t put it to the curb in time but that only fanned the flames so I shrugged and said I’d call. In the next couple of minutes, rather than just apologize and say they’d come get it as they always have in the past, the sanitation department upped their game and I found myself in a heated argument about whether we were a business or a residence. I learned all about their “commercial customer list”, about how the trucks wouldn’t pick up if they thought we were a business, and about how the poor, undeserving civil servants at City Hall were abused. She wanted to know if we had a sign on the property and then said that we certainly had a large parking lot for a residence. She had called us up on Google she informed me with more than a hint of self-righteousness and a definite “see what I can do” tone.

“There’s no damn sign on the property,” I snapped, “and the parking lot isn’t even our’s!, it belongs to the medical building next door! Why are you making this a federal case? All I need is for the damn trash to be picked up!”

This earned me a second lecture on sanitation department policies and procedures. It was futile to point out that we’d been at our current address for several years now and it being a residence or business had never mattered before. Bureaucracy, as a friend of mine recently remarked, is the Devil’s work.