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Before you know it... Phone Male Drives Him Off the Straight and NarrowBy Rick Horowitz I started the morning in a perfectly good mood. I ended the morning with the police at my door. All it took was a car, a truck, a couple of wires and a few well-chosen words. Is it still called road rage if it happens in an alley? This particular alley is the one that runs alongside our house and leads to our garage. I'd been out early for some last-minute holiday shopping, and when I came back home, the phone truck was there. No big deal. The phone truck practically lives in our alley. The switching box for our entire neighborhood is attached to the telephone pole that sits right across from our garage door. Anytime somebody changes phone service, the phone truck shows up to make the necessary adjustments. When it's parked one way, I can still get into the garage. When it's parked another way, I can't, and then I'll pull partway up the alley, raise the garage door with the remote control, and signal to the driver. He'll signal back, finish what he's doing, and move the truck. Happens all the time -- no big deal. Except this time. This time I pull, I raise, I signal. This driver doesn't signal back. The driver's sidekick doesn't signal back. I wait, then wait some more. Finally, I leave my car and walk over to the truck. No acknowledgement from the driver. "Could you please back up?" I say. "I need to get into the garage." Still nothing. I ask a second time. "I'm on the phone," he says. Not "Gimme a sec -- I'm almost done." Not even the universal "I see you, I'll be right with you" raised index finger. Just "I'm on the phone." "And I need to get into the garage," I say, and we're off and running, though at the time, I barely notice it. I go back to my car and wait for him to finish his call. And wait. Then I walk back to the truck and ask again. "You shouldn't interrupt people when they're working," he says, in his most perfectly patronizing tone. "Well," I say, "I've already asked you a couple of times. You have plenty of other phone guys here and it's never a problem. I ask them to move, they move." This guy doesn't move. This guy decides to make another call. I begin to object, and he rolls up his window. I go around to the passenger side, hoping to reason with his sidekick, and he tells his sidekick to roll up his window. We are now officially at war. I march back to my car, grab a pen and some paper. Then back to the truck, to write down the truck number and the license plate number. The guy has his window down again. He's still plugged in to the pole. He's making another call. "This is four times I've asked you to move!" I say. "Why are you making this a big thing?" He starts to roll the window up again, and suddenly, all the grinning, gloating, attitude-dripping service people who've ever had you over a barrel and made sure you knew it, all the mindless, faceless bureaucrats who've ever made life in their tiny corner of the world just a little bit more infuriating -- I snap. Actually, I yank. I yank the wires that connect this idiot's truck to his pole, just unclip them from the switching box and leave them dangling from his window. Then I stomp back to my car, find a parking space down the block somewhere and storm into the house. Which is where the police come visiting a few minutes later. The phone guy has called the police on law-abiding, mild-mannered me! You shouldn't have done that, the officers say. (I know I shouldn't have done that.) You can't take matters into your own hands, they say. You could have become "engaged in something." And they're right -- I can see how it happens. I can even see the headlines: "Angry Motorist Rams Repairman." Or worse: "Homeowner Slain in Alley Brawl." You never know who's packing what these days. Next time you have a problem, the officers say, call us. And I probably will, next time. But this time? It was so easy to get things started, so hard to make things stop. Posted 12/23/99.
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Rick Horowitz