When we left for work this morning, the garage door wouldn’t close again, and I nearly exploded. I drove into the office in a deep funk, and called the Avalon community phone number. The message told me that while the office opened at 9 AM, they didn’t answer phones between 9 and 10 AM. Fine. I fumed for a while.
Back-story: I’ve reported problems with the garage door not closing twice now. Both times were on very cold days like today, and both times, the "fix" appears to have been temporary.
I did some browsing online and found that a garage door not closing in cold weather is a fairly common problem. There were plenty of articles on it, like this one. Yet when I reported the problem in the past, the maintenance guys seemed surprised, as though they’d never seen a garage door stop working before. (Perhaps that was the case, who knows?)
At 9 AM, I headed home and dashed up to the office–which was closed. The sign outside the door said the office hours were from 10 AM – 7 PM on Mondays. I called the phone number again and indeed, the message said the office opened at 9 AM.
Imagine what happens inside a rocket when the pressure in the tank builds shortly before ignition. This will give you some kind of idea what was happening inside me.
Nevertheless, I promised Kelly that I was not going to be a jerk about it. I went downstairs to find the concierge, who confirmed the office hours, but was also kind enough to call and see if the maintenance manager was already in. She was! So he took me upstairs, let me in the office, and directed me to her office so that I could talk with her. I kept my cool. I explained the history of the problem. I explained that this was a well-known problem with garage door openers. I gave her printouts of the articles I found so that she could pass them along to maintenance. And, without being a jerk, I let her know that I would really appreciate it if the problem was resolved once and for all today.
She apologized. She took notes. She said she’d have her maintenance manager go right over and look at it. Thank you, I said. I appreciate it. I went back to work.
After work (and about an hour or so of holiday shopping), we got home and the garage door still didn’t work.
Ignition! At that moment, I felt like driving my car though the garage door. But I had a pregnant woman in the car with me and it probably wouldn’t have been good for her. Nevertheless, the engines were lit, I’d cleared the tower and it was too late to turn back. I tried to stay calm. I went upstairs with Kelly and then dashed over to the rental office in the hope they were still open They were.
I explained the problem. One of the people remembered me from the morning but the maintenance manager was gone. She radioed maintenance and they had no idea about my problem. I couldn’t help roll my eyes and I know she saw me do it. She asked the maintenance guy to meet me at the house and he’d look at it.
He did. He made an adjustment to the down-position power and that seemed to work. For now.
I went back over to the office to thank them for their help this evening. She told me that she called the maintenance manager after I left, and she apologized for not getting to the problem sooner.
I sure hope this thing is fixed! Now if I could only calm my temper down a bit.
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