open letter to my phone company

dear watisfield champlain valley telecom,

you have been my phone company my entire adult life. when i moved out of my mom's house, i happened to have moved to waistfield, back when you were still waitsfield-fayston telephone.

and then on the day i bought this place, you bought this calling area from GTE which made switching my phone service a little tricky because the sale had only gone through at midnight and nobody who knew anything was saying anything about it until somebody over at AT&T took pity on me and told me about the sale so i called your offices and told you that i knew about the sale even though the announcement hadn't been made and could you PLEASE just hook up my phone?

and you did.

took you about ten minutes.

*sigh* good times.

anyway, i went ahead and used you as my internet provider because back then i didn't have very many alternatives.

you probably don't remember the day i went and got myself an airport extreme because i had decided i finally wanted to be wireless here at home and i couldn't get anything to connect up and apple tech support was friendly but unhelpful and as a last hail mary pass i called you up and it took someone on your staff about three minutes to get me all configured properly even though it wasn't YOUR equipment and therefore not technically YOUR problem?

that was sweet of you.

so sunday night when my aged moden sputtered its last and i spent an hour in hold hell and another accumulated hour speaking with your after hours tech support office offsite somewhere in iowa, they were very lovely and they told me they were "escalating" my ticket, which i was told meant that you would be getting back to me as soon as you could.

since it was sunday night and monday was president's day, the nice lady warned me that i might not be hearing from you until tuesday but if i had not heard from you by then, i should call back and refer to this case number.

it seemed reasonable.

i settled in for a coupe of internet-less days.

ten minutes later (bear in mind this is a sunday night) i got a call from your office. the nice man asked me what color my modem was.

"black", i said.
"you need a new one."

this was not really a surprise to me. what WAS a surprise was that even thought the office was closed for president's day, i could come down first thing monday and get me a new modem.

so i did.

and i plugged everything in just how he told me to and it works just fine.

now, i don't have a choice about who my local telephone company is.

but this is why you are still my isp as well. if i could buy my heating oil and groceries from you i would, because you are reliable and kind and a lot of things you maybe don't HAVE to be, but you are anyway.

thanks.

love,
flask