Today's illustrious band:

The Persistence of Memory

Brought to you by surrealist painter Salvador Dali, whose famous 1931 painting of melting clocks bears this name, and the uber-wankers at Southside Heating and Air Conditioning.

WARNING!! Expression of displeasure ahead! If you don't want to read a gripe about bad customer service, read no further.

What does "Meet me there at noon" mean to you? Does it mean "Offer to show up around 1:30, maybe, but only after I call you at 12:30 to find out where the heck you are"? That's apparently what it means to the "service" personnel at Southside H&AC. I scheduled an appointment to have my fritzy central air unit doctored over my lunch hour today, festivities to commence at noon. By 12:30, however, no one had showed up.

When I called the office, I was connected with Keith, the guy who was supposed to make the service call. He mused that perhaps he could amble on over to my house in an hour or so, and that it would take an hour or more to do the work. I informed him that that would not work for me, as I needed to get back to the office. This was news to Keith, who said he had not been informed of the need for timeliness.

Should he have to be? He's in a service industry! How about providing the agreed-upon service at the agreed-upon time?

Sensing my irritation — perhaps my use of the phrase "this is unacceptable" helped him catch on — we arranged that he would "try" to reach my house at 5:00 tomorrow, and that due to today's snafu I would be charged regular rates, not overtime rates, which normally kick in at 4:30. I had to request this concession in a firm voice, as Keith offered no palliation for the inconvenience on his own.

This is where I began to suspect that SH&AC's clocks had melted down and I had entered yet another area of the Customer Service Twighlight Zone. This incident recalls last month's home-improvement fiasco, wherein the hired handyman (A) could not find my house despite his map and real-time directions from his dispatcher on the cell phone, and arrived 1.5 hours late, (B) wilted my plants with his epic halitosis, (C) could not understand the work requests I made, even after I walked him to each project area and physically pointed out what needed to be done and (D) aggravated an injury 1/3 of the way through the job and had to leave.

In SH&AC, we have a service bureau that provides service apparently at its whim, untroubled by the appointment calendar. And they don't do so past 4:30 in the afternoon. Given the fact that most people work until at least 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. and arrive home even later, the overtime policy strikes me as holding customers over a barrel. I can't keep leaving work at 3:00 on the off chance that Keith might decide to drop by. Under normal circumstances I would either have to use vacation time to be home for the service call or pay the overtime rate.

I know I'm not the only person ever to find herself searching the street for the service van like it's a fickle lover, and I certainly won't be the last. But I've had customer service-type jobs in the past and was brought up to behave as if the customer, if not always right, should at least be allowed to think she is. Can anyone tell me when (A) this time-honored business policy was jettisoned and (B) I became a crotchety old curmudgeon?