I know that some of you have real jobs. I used to have a real job, before I became a journalist. In the world of journalism, we refer to “real people” and “real jobs,” which do not refer to people who work in journalism, politics or that strange form of civic bureaucracy in the nether region between the two.
When our bosses send us out to get public reaction to events, they want us to talk to real people, not bureaucrats.
I hate having strangers come to repair things in my house, which unfortunately happens rather frequently, considering it’s now 76 years old — yes, even older than me, though that’s hard to believe.
These people are nearly always guys named Mike. I don’t know why, but they just are, except my excellent longtime plumber, who’s Jeff. No, you can’t have his phone number.
I suspect you probably also feel this way, nervous for the following reasons:
Mike is a total stranger and it’s creepy having strangers in your house, unless they’re delivering Häagen-Dazs.
Mike will judge your housekeeping or lack thereof, especially if you’ve lived there for 10 years and still have unpacked boxes in the foyer. (It could happen).
Mike will look askance at your decorating choices and wonder why you still have your Christmas tree up and lit in August. (I’ve been in more than one house like this in my reporting career but I don’t judge.)
Mike will ask you questions you can’t answer, such as “Where’s the water shut-off valve.” Um, we can shut off the water? Into my house? How does that work?
Or Mike will ask you if you flipped the switch and reset the electricity and you think maybe you did, but maybe it didn’t work.
Mike will go up into your attic to change your air conditioning filter with his buddy, and then come back down laughing and ask if he can take pictures of it to show his friends at work. Because it’s the dirtiest, most disgusting filter he’s ever seen in his life, although he doesn’t say that part. Yes, this actually happened to me and I still cringe when I think about it.
Mike will often tell you that he has to order a part to fix whatever is wrong, and it’s being shipped from a galaxy far, far away. It will cost $478 and take approximately 2.3 years to arrive, unless there’s a solar flare, and then it will take 3 years. Just use the toilet at the gas station until then.
Mike can’t figure out how to repair your dishwasher, which is under warranty, but he doesn’t want to admit he can’t figure out what’s wrong. So he keeps calling someone on his phone while disassembling the entire apparatus and it takes him 3 hours. Finally, he puts everything back together and tells you it’s fixed, but you notice he put something in backwards. He’s annoyed when you point this out.
On another occasion, Mike will come to repair the same dishwasher, which isn’t draining properly so it has stinky water in the bottom. It smells bad. He wrinkles his nose, pretends to do something, tells you to bail out the water and he’ll come back with a part. He leaves. You bail out the water as he asked and wait. He never comes back. Finally, you call the company and find out that Mike has reported he can’t do the work because your dishwasher is “infested with cockroaches.” What? Are you kidding? So you have to call the warranty company and get another repair company to come out. They fix the problem in 15 minutes. No cockroaches.
In an effort to repair a kitchen appliance, Mike pulls the appliance out from the wall and you can both see the disgusting amount of dirt, crud, spilled food and whatever that’s fallen behind it since it was installed. This makes you feel like part of that crud.
You’re trying to get some work done while Mike’s doing his thing, but he calls you over because he wants to “show you something.” This is never good. You never want to see what he wants to show you, because it always consists of a longstanding problem that’s going to take longer and cost you a lot more money. “See how the head grommet goes into the latent windpipe here? That’s against code and someday an inspector might randomly show up at your house and demand to see it and then he’ll make you redo it. Better for me to redo it now. That’ll be $948.”
When I was young and stupid, I used to boast about having a great repairman. I no longer do this, because invariably my friends would ask for his phone number, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t have it. Then, my friends would start hiring him, and tell their friends, and soon I couldn’t get an appointment. This was bad. So now I just keep my mouth shut.