Chapter 8
Jeffee's Daily Crap Friday, April 15
Gosh, I thought I'd be getting back to my love letters but once again crap interrupts my dictation so I'll put the event down while it's fresh in my mind. Today, Saturday I went in my backyard because my poor plants that haven't seen any rain or water for two weeks and I wanted to water them because I've been so busy. As I go to water my oleanders out along the back fence in the backyard, I see these piles of white stuff.
Then I remember my wife told me that CPS or City Public Service, our local gas/electricity company here in San Antonio, Texas had come unannounced into my backyard to do some kind of work. My wife says they didn't tell her anything about it so how could I know what they did? So while I'm out watering the back bushes (oleanders), I noticed these three or four big piles of white stuff. They left a bunch of ceramics and other crap from an old transformer lying on the ground of my backyard.
Most of the ceramics have been laying back there for a couple of months since they replaced something and didn't bother to clean up their junk when they were done. I was just planning at some point when they have the semiannual city trash people pick up anything I would put all that stuff out on the curb and get rid of it.
CPS exceeded my patience level today by leaving these piles of white stuff. A closer examination revealed what they did. I guess it was the Sherlock Holmes in me that figured it out. I noticed a wooden manhole cover that was being held down by a bunch of big rocks. So apparently CPS d dug a hole right there to replace one of their transformer telephone poles for whatever reason and after digging out all the limestone below the ground because in San Antonio if you dig down you will run into soft rock limestone which makes the water very hard and difficult and everybody needs a water softener. They just decided to leave all the limestone rock and dirt and dust and crap in the back yard, maybe three one cubic yard wide piles along the back fence near my oleander bushes.
I think they should clean up their mass after they're done and not expect me to do it. So on Monday I called the local CPS office and asked why they left their mass in my backyard.
Finally after being on hold for a long time to several different people, I found out that they were digging holes to replace the telephone poles holding transformers in people's backyards on my street and that the old telephone poles were put up in 1977 and were expected to collapse within two years so they wanted to replace them now before they fell down. I asked why couldn't they leave me a notice or something telling me what's going on? The very nice CPS person said yes they are supposed to leave you a notice and she doesn’t know why they didn't leave me a notice. And she said we use a different contractor to dig the holes and a different contractor to put the new telephone poles. The contractor is supposed to put the new telephone pole in within two days of the other contractor digging the hole.
That was three days ago, I still have the piles of limestone sitting back against my oleanders but I did see some CPS trucks working on other houses on my street so hopefully they will get to me in within the next few days
I really get tired of people giving me lots of crap and think I'm just going to sit there and take it as I don't take it anymore.
Like yesterday work tried to give me a bunch of crap and I didn't take it. I work on the first floor of this building. I was forced to move into building xxx. In their infinite wisdom they did rehabilitate building xxx a couple of years ago so a new directorate could move in there. But now the Air Force wants to make the basement some kind of command post or something so now they gutted the basement by having a construction crew tearing up the basement with the jackhammer drills and other loud construction tools and making it into new offices and things. And since I wrote this a long time ago at least two months ago, the construction noise has continued until yesterday the last day I was at work this week so the construction noise is going hot and heavy for two or three months but who's counting? Me, I'm counting!!
That doesn't sound so bad does it? If you are working in the floor above the basement and the construction people are using very loud jackhammers that sound like jet planes that not only make a lot of noise, maybe around 120 dB but the jackhammer is so powerful it actually vibrates the room and it started giving me motion sickness or nausea and I was getting sick. After my description of that it does sound so bad doesn't it?
I told my boss I can't take this; these are impossible working conditions I am taking sick leave and going home. At the same time I was listening to all this loud noise and vibration, they keep giving me all these projects with a big urgent deadline to perform but then they don't seem to give a crap that I don't I don't exactly have good working conditions to work on these rush projects.
I actually went outside and found the construction foreman for that basement and I asked him: "I said hey, don't you know there are people working above you and you’re making us sick with your jackhammer?" Then I said: "Why can't you do what they do when they construct roads – do the jackhammering after five o'clock when everybody's home or do it on the weekend why the heck you have to do it during the day when this people working here?”
God gave me common sense. I don't ignore crap anymore and I'm more than happy to let the world know about the crap that I suffer from, I'll bet a lot of you suffer from the same crap – don't take it anymore!. My message to you is simple don't accept crap when it comes to you – fight back do what you can do, nobody else really cares. A typical Jeffee result occurred from my logical intervention asking the construction foreman those questions. My immediate boss My boss comes back to me and says the big boss Dale was mad and you are not authorized to talk to the construction crew so don't do it again. My only crime was being born.
So before I left work right at lunch time and I would left earlier except I had a luncheon date with my old buddy Guy M. He was retiring in a couple months so he won't be around so I didn't want to miss lunch so I hung around for another hour and a half listening to that jackhammer that is driving me crazy and again making me very sick. Before I left I let the boss, the big boss there named Dale that I found working conditions impossible and I was going home – I never did get an answer from him which is typical.
Meanwhile back to the love letters after I add a little footnote to the paragraphs below about how Jeffee tried to get another security clearance. I forgot I have so much crap happening in my life. I ignored some more crap I had to do in order to get a security clearance less than a year after I'd gotten the previous one.
I wish all this crap wasn't true but again like many things like trying to get the exchange student, in a most of the things in my life I am the mushroom in the back of the cave and really have no idea what's going on because not much light shines on us mushrooms in the back of the cave. And I think mushrooms grow in manure fertilizer if I am not wrong so I get both manure and the darkness all in the back of the cave how wonderful!
I think again using my Sherlock Holmes powers I figured out the crux of the matter. CPS has absolutely terrible customer service and they don't think they have any need to let the homeowner know what the hell they are doing in his backyard. I guess they can just come right into my backyard, trespassed upon it as far as I'm concerned (I checked, CPS didn't pay any of my property taxes last year).