From the time we are little we are taught not to lie. It's a universal truth that we all learn (hopefully). But as I've gotten older, I've found more and more people that haven't really held onto that truth. The problem with lying is that if you lie and someone finds out you've lied, how can they trust anything that you have said before or after. Let me give you an example. This happened to us recently and I was honestly shocked.
We came home from a great family reunion weekend up in mountains to find our internet was out. This is not something we normally freak about because we are able to get a hold of someone to come fix it pretty quick. I called on Tuesday and someone came out to look at it. Over the course of the next few days, the tech would come out at the end of the day, give us a song and dance about not being able to get the internet set up. At first, we had no trouble believing that there were problems. The satellite's were moved so they needed to be adjusted, there was rain, pieces are missing, the ladder was to short . . . and so on. By the end of the week, we were beginning to feel like something fishy was happening.
Our first clue that something wasn't right was Thursday. Weston and I hadn't heard anything from him all day, so Weston texted him to find out the status of the internet. He told Weston that the maintenance guys who worked on the swamp coolers had taken some of the satellite pieces, so he had to go get some new ones. Later that same day, around 4, he told us that his ladder was to short to reach the top of the building so he couldn't fix the internet today. We were a little confused then how he knew there were pieces missing when he didn't have a ladder that didn't reach the roof. This is like the doctor who told me that my throat looked fine, when he in fact had NOT looked at my throat. We kind of overlooked this little inconsistency in his story because he promised us that he would be here the next morning to give us internet.
Well, I'm sure you can guess what happened next.
He didn't contact us at all, all morning. On the way out of the apartment in the afternoon, I asked the maintenance guy if our internet tech contacted him about the ladder like he had said he would. He said yes, that the tech did and that he had told him that the ladder was behind the apartments and he could come get them whenever he needed it. So I knew. I knew that he had called and that the ladder was just sitting there.
We called the tech, at least once an hour from 10 to 1; probably closer to twice an hour to be honest. Weston's job works almost solely over the internet doing video conferences and email for his main communication, so we were very anxious to have the internet up and running.
After Weston had tried and failed to get through to this tech, I called on my phone only minutes after he had tried. The tech answered! I said hey, and asked if he had received any of my husbands messages, and he say's he had been out of cell service all morning. Hmmmm, he had promised us that he would be back that morning to come work on the internet, and somehow was conveniently out of cell service ALL MORNING? He then proceeded to tell me that he would be in at 3 because that's when the ladder would be there. I called him on that by telling him that the maintenance guy told me that the ladder was here and that it was ready for him whenever he wanted it. He acted surprised, like he hadn't known this information.
The end of this story was a few very angry left voice mails to the tech and the company (who had also failed to answer their phone) as 3:00pm came and went. We ended up going to Comcast and getting internet, modem and router set up and installed in less then one hour. I called our now former internet provider to let them know that we have cancelled out internet and that the power supply for the apartment complex was sitting outside on the porch for when they wanted to come get it.
The moral of this story is not about horrible customer service, even though that is what happened, it is that if you lie everything is thrown into question. We started to go over everything he had said and done. Was there really a problem with the satellites? He obviously hadn't been up to the roof, so he didn't really know if parts were missing. What had he been doing this whole time? Literally four days of messing around and I had no concrete proof that he had done anything he said he had. Because of the way he reacted to me when I told him that I had talked to the maintenance guy makes me think this man was not a first time offender either, but a well versed liar. The problem comes when people started to check up on him. He stopped answering phone calls and responding to text's when we started to become suspicious that something wasn't right.
If you have to contently be looking over your shoulder, you will never see the wall that you're about to run into.
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