A Funny Phone Call

Yesterday, Pete and Ian stopped by, to examine our furnace.    The furnace fan is very noisy and Pete thought this could be rectified by changing some internal settings.  It turns out this furnace doesn't have these internal settings, so we are stuck with a noisy furnace fan.  They also put in a new programmable thermostat for us.  As they were wrapping up their work, suddenly the furnace fan stopped -  unexpectedly.  Pete and Ian both went to examine the thermostat, while I attempted to turn on a light for them.  That's when I realized the power was out, and the furnace was fine.   Since it had been working, Pete and Ian could leave.  However, as they were packing up, the phone rang.

Me:  Hello, Karen speaking
Caller:  Hi, this is Jane Doe from 50 Easy Street.  Is there a power outage?
Me:  Yes, it just went out about 2 minutes ago.
Caller:  Oh, good, I just wanted to make sure it was a power outage, and my power hadn't been cut off since I haven't paid my bill.
Me:  No, it's a power outage.  Where did you say you were calling from, again?
Caller:  50 My Street.
Me:  Okay, have a good day!

I shared the story with Rob, Pete & Ian - we all found it quite amusing that some random resident of our town called here to inquire whether the power was out or whether she had been cut off.    But then the phone rang again.  It was another resident of our town, and she thought she had called the utility company.  Um, no, this is a residential number.  However, her call shed a lot more light on my first caller!  It seems that Bell Canada's system wasn't dealing with the power outage well, and some how we were getting the calls for the utility company!  In fact, there was one more call that came through.  I was beginning to think I was going to have a long afternoon of saying "No, I'm sorry this is not ABC County Power, the telephone system isn't working properly."  However, there were only the three calls and then 10 or 15 minutes later the power came back on.

At least, it came back on at our house.  Hopefully, for the occupants of 50 Easy Street, the power came back on there too!