Thursday, January 12, 2006

A Mere "Lever"age Issue??

The loud knock on the door almost made me jump. At the risk of dropping the laptop firmly perched on my lap, I rushed to the door. My eyes rested on what would normally be the midriff of a human being, this specific one far from being captivating. I adjusted my eyelevel so I could look at the face. Boy! was he tall or what?? A little taller and it would have warranted breaking the ceiling to accomodate his extended self. I never knew our apartment's maintanence department recruited NBA players !

He inquired about the problem on hand and I faithfully pointed to the patio door. The 10 steps that usually ferried me from the front foyer to the patio door was done in just 3 long strides. Being tall does have its gains, I pondered grimly! Pushing these thoughts aside, I almost had to run to keep up with the hulk. He bent down to check the problem and I couldn't believe his occupying almost 3/4 the height of the french door!! Recovering from the unbelievable sight just ahead, I explained as to how the door got stuck and we haven't been able to open it. The man got down to work, a few seconds passed and he asked me to try the door. I did.

It slid back beautifully letting the cool fresh air in, almost like a door leading to heaven! I gaped, surprise evident on my face.
Whooaaa! how did that happen?
I asked fumbling all the way, a thousand questions and situationally right answers flooding my brain.
'It was just the child lock lever', he stated a little too matter of factly!

He showed me how that worked, and I wanted to drown in my own filth that very moment, literally. I openly wallowed in self-pity then, probably trying to elicit some sympathy from the rather large hulk. I muttered some vague defenses as how I never knew such a thing existed, blah blah! Not concealing his surprise as well as he did his laughter, he walked out lecturing me Oh, don't u worry.... Once you have kids, you will know how to fix things more than our whole department puttogether!! I thanked him profusely and uttered a heartfelt apology for placing a work order for nothing at all. He waved at me, and moved on. I closed the door, heavy in thought.

I went back to the patio door and sat down next to it, looking at it intently. Not 1, but 2 of us had contended with it the previous night, but to no avail. We had just not seen the simple lever on the right side of the door.

Post-mortem being useless at that point of time, I threw the reasoning out the same door. 'There will always be a next time for all the alertness to kick in' I firmly decided. What say??


4 comments:

Lg said...

ha ha ha! Is this the season of the ninnyhammer? :-)

nourish-n-cherish said...

Hee hee hee!

We had our gleaming new TL brought home, and we could not open the back door from inside the car. I was puzzled, even somewhat irked that something may be wrong with the car - then, we read the manual and found the child-lock was on :) Of course, now I understand the huge importance of simple mechanisms like these!

BrainWaves said...

Not a day goes by in our software life where we (developers) think it is self-evident and users (customers) gets confused and give a panic call which wakes up 4-5 sleeping souls all around the globe.

This is a classic example.

Meera Manohar said...

Saumya, your TL experience brings to mind yet another recent bungle, in Sacramento.

Enroute to see Sriks in his 5th mile, Manu, I and your dad stopped the big mama van for some gas (the actual reason being Manu's much needed 'bio-break'). "Be the good samaritan," I thought and wanted to fill the gas while he was away. Effective usage of time, you see!!

Guess what?? I couldn't get the foot brake off. Surprise, surprise!? Toiled with it for quite sometime before I gave up. All I had to do was lift a small plastic lever just atop the brake, I later realised.

he he....