Mission Road route update

I've posted something about that Concepción Park for past couple of months, every time I've done my regular cycle 17 route. I did it again last week.

This time, I was given a "need read" note for that meter at the park which I had said was going to be a "lost" meter. A "need read" note is their way of saying, "We all know you could read this meter if you weren't such a lazy piece of ****, so read it this time." For some reason, they can't understand that when a person has been reading a meter unfailingly every month for the past 4 years and suddenly says he can't read it anymore, he really means he can't read it anymore.

I find these little notes to be very insulting.

I told them before I left that morning that that little note wasn't going to do them any good. I still wasn't going to read that meter. I was right.

So yesterday I finished early and had to kill a few minutes before I went back to the office, so I parked in a shady spot on Theo--that is, Theo Parkway, which used to be Theo Avenue--and as I was sitting there another company vehicle came slowly by, then threw a U-turn and came back. For a minute I thought maybe I was in trouble, but he rolled his window down and asked me if I knew that route.

I told him that although I had done that route already last week, yes I was in fact the guy who was turning in that meter as "removed." "Where is it?" he asked. "I can show you more or less where it was," I said. So I drove him around and I was very amused that when he jumped out of his truck (actually one of those Nitro things) he had his hook with him, as if he thought he was going to immediately find it and solve the problem. He didn't. So I showed him, based on where the old parking lot is, about in the general area where it had been before.

"No problem, bro," he said. "We can't find it, I'll just write up a work order and turn it over to the heavy equipment guys." "So what do they do with it?" I asked. He shrugged. "I don't know. Once I turn it over to them, it's not my problem."

And there, folks, in that one sentence, is the de facto mission statement of your w4t3r company.