Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Customer Service

An elderly lady with a walking stick was in the line ahead of me at the Post Office this afternoon.

" I just got my gas bill. I about fainted when I opened it up," she said.

" How much was it, Miss Jean?, " asked the female postal worker as she applied the postage to the box being mailed by the lady.

" 300 dollars! Ted paid all the bills so maybe it has been that high in the past and I never knew it. But I never saw one that high."

" It was awful cold last month, Miss Jean."

" It wasn't that cold. Anyway, I called the gas company to see if there was a mistake."

" What did they say?'

" Well I told them that I had never seen a bill that high before. Of course, Ted paid all the bills."

" Yes ma'am Miss Jean. But what did they tell you?"

" They told me that the reason why the bill was so high was because there weren't two bodies producing heat in the house now that Ted's died which makes the house colder."

The postal worker looked at Miss Jean in stunned silence. Eventually she spoke.

" Jean, that's just ridiculous." she said.

" Well, that's what I thought. I had half a mind to go to the main office downtown and hit somebody with this walking stick. But then my son told me that the gas company doesn't have an office in Little Rock anymore," Jean said.

" They probably don't come to think of it."

" I wouldn't know. Ted paid all the bills. But I sure have been forced to learn a lot of stuff lately."

And with that Miss Jean took her leave.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So sad on so many different levels.

Anonymous said...

That's just WRONG.

How many ways can this great system of ours screw over the elderly?

And then, there's Ted gone, too.

I wish I could help...

lucy