story begins:
my girlfriend and i just moved into a house. we set up an appointment for last tuesday to have our gas turned on so we could do things like cook, take showers, and have heat (tiny dog and snakes would like some heat please). lady comes out and fiddles around for a bit at which point i have to go to work so girlfriend remains home to take care of it. we had our cable installed on that monday (must have internet of course) and the comcast guy warned us that there was a wasp's nest in our cable box. he was actually very good about hooking up the cable anyway whilst dodging wasps. girlfriend got spray that same day and sprayed the crap out of the nest, so the wasp problem was gone. since the gas lady was walking around the house, girlfriend warned gas lady that there had been a wasp's nest in said cable box and therefore there might be a couple of stray wasps around, and gave her the spray to use just in case. it didn't turn out to be a problem though.
the gas lady tried to light the gas but said that due to (something something, i wasn't there and girlfriend has not the best memory), the gas needed to be turned on at the source or something...basically, she couldn't turn it on on the outside of the house, it needed to be lit under the house, accessed by our crawlspace. now admittedly our crawlspace is kinda small and not fun to be in (dirt, spiderwebs, etc), and the woman was fairly obese so i can see where she wouldn't really be able to do it. okay, no problem. she said that if we called our maintenance people that they should be able to light it. alright.
we call maintenance people, they say that it is the dept. of public utilities job to light our gas, and that we reallly ought to get them to do it. i agree, it is their job. we call gas company again, and gas company says...
they can't come out and light our gas because the lady who was out earlier says there was a wasp's nest in our crawlspace.
um, no?
girlfriend says no, there are no wasps. gas company says hey, it doesn't matter, she says there was and now it's a liability so we can't come out to verify the existence of wasps. we're not coming. period. too bad, so sad, not our problem anymore.
eventually we had to get the owner of the house to come out now that it is pouring down rain, he kindly climbed under the house and lit it, getting extremely muddy, and we have heat. thank you house owner.
but the gas company...how can they get away with this? are they never coming to this house again for the entirety of its existance? i mean, come on. that's ridiculous.
if i get charged a single penny for 'installation' or whatever, i will flip out. that will be the end of it. this is why i hate richmond. okay, i hate richmond for more than that, but this is a good example.
:( at least my feet are warm now.