I left the gym in a bad mood today, and fuming and scowling, made my way to the bus stop and back home. As I slipped my key into the keyhole, I heard a strange buzzing noise, coming, fittingly enough, from my apartment. "Ugh, great," I thought. "Just what I needed."
I entered the apartment, and the loud buzzing enveloped me. I promptly burst into tears, and went in search of the source of the annoyance. I found it in a small metal panel, the size of a switch plate, screwed into the wall in the kitchen. I felt the panel. It was warm. "What do I do?" I demanded of myself. I tripped the circuit breaker. Nothing. "Aaargh." And another bout of tears.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I dialed the management office number, then the emergency pager number. I paged, and waited. A few minutes later, as I began dialing the pager number for the second time, the call came. I explained the situation, then repeated it to someone else. I was ordered to trip the circuit breaker again, and did so. Nothing. Then I was told to go down to the garage and do the same again on my apartment's circuit breaker. I dutifully did so. Still nothing.
They said they were sending someone over to investigate, but he was coming from Jersey City and it would take about half an hour. In the meantime, I should call the electricity company to see if they could figure out what the problem was, and what the mysterious panel was. I did as I was told, spoke to someone clueless, who told me to call an electrician "Erm, I don't think it has anything to do with electricity," I informed her. "Yes, I know. That's why you should call an electrician," came the reply. I gave up, hung up, and decided to wait for the guy from the management office.
About 20 minutes later, after a pointless phone call to Nev--an engineer who informed me that he couldn't diagnose a problem from just a buzzing noise--several confused looks from an annoyed Weds, and a splitting headache in the making, I heard a knock on the door. Wondering why he hadn't buzzed the doorbell, I opened the door. He looked at me, looked at the doorbell, looked back at me, pressed the doorbell, and asked "Is this it?" The buzzing noise stopped instantly. Blessed peace.
He started laughing, while I grinned sheepishly, and apologized profusely. A phone call to the management office and more apologies later, the repair man left. And I kicked myself. Why didn't I think of it? The freakin' doorbell of all things. Figures!
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5 comments:
OOPS! you are too funny, Nichola. :)
he!he! I once made some some guy rip apart the locks of my front door coz' I lost zee' keys...at least..I thought I lost d' keys...found it eventually...inside my bag..the bag I was with the whole day long..
I once threw away my keys when I was in college. I put them on the kitchen counter, and they decided to go exploring in the garbage can. And these keys included one to the entire admin building of my college--that would be the building with the offices of all the top people at the college--and the key to the communications office. Why would someone trust ME of all people with such an important object!?!?? After hunting around the dumpster room--yes, I was brave enough to enter the dumpster room and actually hunt around--I finally gave up, and ended up paying to have them replaced.
Oh, so you have a history, I see. :)
Ohhh! You have NO idea!
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