But on Friday evening, I was.  The forecast was for a cold weekend, and while we, down at Turning Tide Cottage, are more or less used to nesting in the living room with a space heater and a fleece covering the door, the pipes are less used to moving around and hunkering down with us in the living room. 

Friday wasn’t that cold, though, and we still had a little less than a quarter of a tank, so I figured we could probably make it to Monday.

I didn’t know we were going to go Oil Crazy over the weekend.  Chris had reorganized our son and heir Tristan’s room so he could use it as a computer room, and he isn’t used, as I am, to dealing with the cold with down comforters and hot water bottles. 

So we used a little more oil than usual, which is to say, the house was slightly warmer than 50 degrees.

On Monday morning, the tank was down to practically nothing, so I called the Oil Company first thing in the morning. 
They acted like they had never heard of me, which is nuts, because I had placed the order, in person, in the office.  Then they said we didn’t have a credit account, which is also loony, since I had just paid the credit bill five days earlier.  They wanted us to pay the delivery driver in cash or money order. 

I said, “I just paid you over $500.  I don’t have any cash.”

We finally arrived at the truth of the matter, which is that somehow, our account had been converted to a COD account, and the Office Lady not-so-cheerfully converted it back.

So while I was on the phone with the dispatcher, she assured me that the delivery would take place on Monday morning.

Well, it didn’t.

But of course, this particular Oil Company closes at 4:30, so by the time I got home, and realized they had, once again, not delivered, I called the emergency number and asked ... nicely at first, of course ... what happened. 

The kid on the line was just a note taker, a message boy.  But he had the on-call driver call me.

So I asked him.

“You’re not on my list,” he said.  “You’d have to pay me.”

“But I had a delivery scheduled and they didn’t come,” I said.  “Why can’t you just make the delivery the other driver was supposed to make?”

“That’s not how it works,” he said.

Funny, I always assumed that when you ordered something, and scheduled a delivery, the way things worked was that they delivered whatever it was when they said they would.  And if they screwed up, it was just Good Customer Service to solve the problem as soon as possible.

“That’s not Company Policy,” said the on-call delivery guy.  “I guess you’re on your own tonight.”

Yeah.  I’m figuring that out.

So I called the message boy back, and asked for a number of someone who could help.  He couldn’t help there, but he did give me the name of the president of the Oil Company, who is conveniently Not In The Book.  Or I swear to Athena, I would have called him at home and ruined his dinner the way he ruined mine.

So after freezing all night, at 7:30 the next morning,  I called again.  The dispatcher had no idea why the oil hadn’t been delivered.  I asked her to find out and call me back.  To her credit, she did.

“The driver will be there in 45 minutes to an hour,” she told me.

Well, they were a little late, and Chris was putting his shoes on to go down to the office and stage a Sit-In until they delivered, but then they showed up, about half an hour after they said they’d be there.

So he’s warming the house up to above freezing, while I am sitting in my warm office.

But this is a cautionary tale.  And it is yet another good reason while we’ll be moving to heating with wood this summer.