The call to the billing department at SoCalGas was made around 11 a.m. last Tuesday. It ended two loads of laundry and a car wash later while I waited on hold.
“We apologize, but we’re experiencing high call volume. Your wait time is between one hour and five minutes and one hour and 38 minutes. If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 911.”
As a matter of fact, it was an emergency. When I tell my 95-year-old father his gas bill this month is $490, I’m going to need a couple of paramedics to help me get him down from the ceiling.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked me last month when his gas bill was “only” $270. It’s a legitimate question 21.8 million people being held hostage by SoCalGas are asking. It’s not like we have a choice to use them. Where else are we going to go?
My dad’s an old school Republican living on an old school Democrat agenda. He gets by on Social Security and Medicare, but he’s glued to Fox News all day.
We don’t talk politics, but we do talk money, and these days that’s the cost of natural gas, which is testing the ground rules for a lot of people from his generation living out their lives on fixed income budgets with zero fat in them.
My father supported his family on the salary of a Brink’s Armored Car guard for 30 years — getting shot once for it — and he never made more than $28,000 a year with overtime. Like a lot of families, we lived paycheck to paycheck, but he always made sure I never wanted for anything. His kid came first.
Now, it’s payback time, me taking care of him, but he won’t hear of it. He’s stubborn as an old mule. That’s not the way it worked for his generation. They paid for their kids coming into the world and damn if they’re going to ask their kids to pay for them as they leave it.
My dad’s blind so he can’t see the bills when they come in. I’ve been hiding this one from him. My mom used to read every bill to him, patiently sitting at the kitchen counter,…
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