SCENE
About 9 pm on Sunday night after a long birthday celebration featuring a crab boil, a fair amount of alcohol and a huge red velvet cake a thunderstorm rolls in. Lightning crashing all around and the power starts to flicker. More crashing, more wind and rain. Power flickers several more times and then finally goes crashing out. Total darkness. Like you cannot see your face in front of your hand dark except when the lightning flashes. Over on the wall by the front door, the Vivint alarm panel begins shrieking, warning of a low battery. As we're looking at it, the panel too goes dark and can't be revived. A call to the utility company offers no real hope. Could be hours, they don't know.
There are several women in the house. The lack of an alarm during a power outage is a source of concern. Because when might burglars be likely to strike? When there are no lights. Perhaps we should call Vivint Support to see if there is something we can do to re-awaken the panel and also to make sure it isn't sending an alarm to the police since it isn't powered on. Who knows how these things work, it might have been.
Call goes out. Woman with heavy eastern european accent (she sounds like the same one who answers almost every support call you make these days) answers and promises to provide immediate help. Where are these women? Croatia? Latvia? Lithuania? Russia? Czech? Who knows that either.
Keep in mind there are six people in the room, all lurking somewhere in the dark.
The call goes like this:
After the pleasantries, Tina (let's call her Tina because I don't remember her name) opens with "Okey, now I help you troubleshit the problem."
I hear snickers from the darkened gallery. I cling on to my composure and stammer "wh-wha-what did you say, I didn't hear you"
Tina: Troubleshit. We troubleshit your issue.
Snickers turn to full on laughter. I have to hit mute.
We walk through the process of taking the panel apart which is broken up by the fact that my screwdriver was too big for the tiny little screw at the top of the panel, leading her to say "maybe is just too beeeg for the hole, no? You cannot put it in?" I hear people choking themselves while laughing.
I survive that, get the panel apart and then she wants me to check the battery.
Tina: Can you feel it for me? Eeees it hot? Does eeet feel swollen to you?
At this point there are people literally crashing to the floor in the other room, bawling with laughter. Tina can hear them too and she chuckles a little, clearly unsure of what's so damned funny.
My veneer is steadily cracking, standing there in the dark with people crawling on the floor around me laughing. My responses to her are choppy, interrupted by failed attempts to keep from breaking into full laughter.
Tina: So do you feel it bulging?
I might have been able to hang on to the thin thread of rationality I had left, but before I could stop my face from spitting it forth, my inner Michael Scott broke from the leash and I heard my self bray into the phone
'Thaaats what SHE said"
The room dissolved into screaming, wheezing laughter. My composure was gone. Phone on the floor, hands on my knees donkey laughing at myself while the rest of the room joined in.
Couldn't tell you how long we did nothing but laugh while Tina sat there patiently. Finally when we had subsided some, she says "maybe we should just wait to see when the power comes on and then the system will work, no?"
So Tina or whatever your name really is? We're sorry. It was funny at the time. Or at least it seemed that way.
Called Vivint back this morning. They have to send a technician out. We have to sign a COVID statement verifying that no one in the house has come in contact with anyone who tested positive and also that no one in the house at the time of his visit is experiencing any symptoms associated with the virus. Otherwise no technician. That took the fun completely out of it.
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