Praise for a CUC employee

Recently Harry Blalock suggested that we not direct our wrath over our utilities at the lower level CUC employees. This is a point well taken and which has prompted me to write.

Two of the “smart” water meters at the properties my wife and I own in Garapan stopped working. Because they have a digital display I assumed they require a small battery, but I wasn’t sure. A few weeks ago I was driving by the Water Task Force office on Capitol Hill just as one of the employees drove up. More out of curiosity than anything I stopped and asked him if the smart meters do in fact require batteries. He said yes they do, but they should last for several years. He asked me where the meters were located, and when I told him he said, “I’ll take care of it.” This response totally caught me off guard, and to save both of us the embarrassment of nothing being done I gave him an escape route. I said, don’t worry about it; I’ll call it in to the trouble desk. Again, he said he would take care of it. He didn’t tell me it wasn’t his job, ask me to fill out a form, draw him a map, or report it to his supervisor who was unfortunately on leave for the next month because his third cousin’s sister-in-law had the measles. He simply said he’d take care of it. We parted ways, with myself scratching my head trying to figure out what had just taken place. I mean, I wasn’t really looking for someone to solve my problem. I just thought maybe we’d talk about it for a while.

About a week after this encounter I got ready to write CUC a scathing letter, asking them why my meters haven’t worked in a year, but I figured that I had better be sure of my facts first, so I went by Garapan to take one more look at the meters. Lo and behold, both meters have been replaced. Unfortunately I did not get the name of the individual I spoke to, but I hope he reads this and realizes that his professionalism is noted and appreciated. Of course, I am not so dumb as to think that every non-management CUC employee is a ball of fire just waiting to be freed from the shackles of supervisory ineptitude, but many of them are. There must be at least two individuals other than this technician that knew there was a problem with out meters for over one year but did nothing: the meter reader himself and the person who enters the readings into the system. It’s too bad that the response of the latter is what we have come to expect, and that those employees with a desire to perform their jobs well far too often go unrecognized.