10.29.08
The Day the Phones Went Down
Hi — Oscar here,
It’s true — for an hour or two last week the phone lines dropped off — one by one — until the Center for Aesthetics was dead in the water.
Lavonne even called her number using her cellphone and got the message, “That number is no longer in service.” Now, how scary is that?
Frantic calls to Verizon by Debbie (the office manager) found out the reason. Verizon had been sending our bills to an ancient Post Office Box (no longer in use) … get this … for a year! They even sent payment reminders to this address (with bounced mail I might add) thinking somehow we could intuit they were trying to contact us.
But from a cat’s perspective — and we think logically — no food in bowl … go yawn mightily in my person’s face (the doctor) so he fills my bowl. Simple, and effective.
But do you think Verizon — a PHONE COMPANY — would use (god forbid) a PHONE — to find out why they weren’t being paid? Of course not. In the corporate world that would be too simple, too logical, too likely to produce results.
Should my person’s bookkeeper have picked this up? Yep — but she didn’t.
Anyway — it was fixed by wire transfer of the money due … and my person will watch like a hawk (that expression bothers me a little — scary birds) to see if the morons at Verizon gets the address right from now on.
And all the phone lines are alive and kicking once again.
As my buddy Forest Gump once said, “Litter box happens!” (Come on — this is a family blog!)
So the lesson is: never trust corporate … and if you want something done right — do it yourself.
That’s how I operate. 
Oscar