Perhaps I’m confused, but when I expressly tell a company to call me before attempting to enter my property, I mean it. And when I ask a technician if his company will contact me before beginning the work that they’ll do for us, and he says they will, I actually expect that will happen. Apparently, they all had other ideas.

We were told that we need a larger sized cable between the box and the house and we agreed to the job on December 2, 2015, over two months ago. I indicated to the technician at that time that I wanted to review everything that would be happening prior to any work being done. He assured me that would happen. It didn’t. To my surprise, I received a call from the subcontractor this morning who will be replacing the cable coming to my home.

After returning home from our walk, I had finished making my smoothie and Jerry (my husband) was making his when suddenly he left the house, the Vita Mix still spinning. Evidently he saw someone in our backyard, odd when you consider that we have two locked gates to get through and several No Trespassing signs as well. Our driveway is too narrow for delivery trucks anymore with the new eight-foot fence we installed, so we’ve had to get creative when people need to come here.

We have a small gate adjacent to the first one that is closed with a bungee cord for any deliveries which are left in a large lockable container up by the gate. The locate guy entered through the small gate, traveled over 700 feet down our driveway, ignoring both No Trespassing signs as he did so, climbed over the eight-foot game fence next to the second gate, and began spraying his orange paint, in some areas having nothing to do with the project.

When Jerry confronted the guy, he said he typically knocks on the door to let folks know he’s there, but he didn’t do that this time. He even admitted climbing the fence. You’d have thought the No Trespassing signs would have been a clue if the locked gate wasn’t enough. What if he had been met by a dog, or a shotgun? We’ve even had to put up No Weapons Allowed signs to keep people who open carry from bringing weapons onto our property. I don’t care what they do elsewhere, but here, what I say goes. It’s called property ownership.

I value communication. And silly me, I think others should do the same. It really saves so much confusion in the process. But now after more than two months since we agreed to the cable replacement, even though I asked them to and I was told they would, no one calls, no one emails, they just show up. I had to suggest to the subcontractor when he got fussy about calling me next week to give me a day and time for his work that we could always forget the whole thing. Amazing how the fussiness stops when income loss is involved. So we’ll see. I may be updating this next week.

I called my local cable company and spoke with a very nice woman who agreed that none of this should have happened, and told me that she would forward this to the appropriate department and someone would be calling me back. It’s only been a couple of hours, but since I mentioned that I could have had the locate guy arrested for trespassing, I’m fairly sure they’ll call back.

Or not.

~Blessed Be

UPDATE: Toward the end of the day I received a call from a woman who the first woman gave my complaint to. She called to tell me that she’s not the one who will be helping me and she won’t be able to find anyone until Monday. I’ve never heard so many words to tell me that I won’t be talking to anyone I actually need to talk to unless I’m listening to that Palin creature. Seriously. She was also foolish enough to suggest that the locate company really isn’t my cable company’s problem. She seemed confused when I suggested that if not for the company she works for, the locate company wouldn’t have been on my property at all. Oh, and she should see the quote from Grammarist below for the proper usage of agreement versus agreeance. And then please stop saying agreeance. Just say that you agree that the idiot shouldn’t have climbed my fence and leave it at that.

All I wanted was a call from my cable company telling me the project was beginning, the name of the subcontractor, and then for me to remind everyone involved of my locked gate situation. Instead, I get a girl who uses too many words to say absolutely nothing. Call me kooky, but I like everyone on the same page. Instead, I get no communication and a moron climbing over my eight-foot fence and entering my property unannounced and without my permission.

Happy weekend everyone. More updates next week..

From Grammarist:

Agreement vs agreeance