Retaining Retainers

Irving, my butler for many a year, approached me yesterday with a problem. Apparently the TV cable to the servant's quarters had been inadvertently cut by some oaf hired by the city to clean out culverts. Attempts to have the cable company rectify this situation had all fallen flat, with a series of little trucks appearing off and on, with their occupants all bearing the same message: "Your cable is cut." This Irving already knew. What he wanted was someone to fix the damn thing.

"Well," one cable employee said, "we will need a permit from the city in order to dig. This may take between six and eight weeks." Irving, knowing that the staff would find this intolerable, came to me.

Now it has always been my policy to keep retainers happy, and if access to such things as cable TV fell into this category, so be it. Although why both the upstairs and downstairs maids were so intent on gardening and food channels escaped me. What is "Reality Cooking" anyway? Surely not haute cuisine, a phrase, to my way of thinking, that describes food eaten on the moon. Nevertheless, a happy staff is an industrious staff, and action was called for.

Actually, the whole matter was resolved rather easily. I placed a phone call to the CEO of the cable company (on his private line -- we have had dealings before -- and suggested the problem should get fixed within the next half hour, reminding him as well that I was privy to certain of his actions with regards to just who could, and who couldn't, get the food concessions at a little baseball emporium he owns. Within the aforesaid half hour, three trucks appeared along with a small army of technicians, and all was done, permits be damned. (I suspect he has a number of permits already filled out for just such occasions.)

That night the staff were especially attentive, reinforcing my policy of contentment breeding contentment. As for my own TV needs, a discreet satellite tucked under the east wing eave serves all my HBO needs, a small gift from NASA for certain services rendered in the past.

I wonder, however, what people must go through with cut cable lines when one doesn't have access to the CEO? Perhaps it is just as well that Canada has very strict gun control laws.