alenxa_classic | scary the cable guy

So.

About an hour ago, I was in the bathroom, fighting with a hair clip that wouldn't close, and I thought I heard a knock at the door. We don't have a peephole, so I don't open the door most of the time when someone knocks. I stopped for a second and opened the bathroom door, waiting to see if they'd yell something about why they were there like maintenance and delivery services tend to do. It took a while, but they knocked again. And then again, and again, both on the door and with the knocker. I was starting toward the door to open it and ask what the hell was so urgent about becoming a Jehovah's Witness when I saw the doorknob jiggle. Someone was trying to open my front door. Being a girl at home alone, I dived for the phone, ready to call 911 if they did it again. They didn't. But this was just the beginning of the WTF.

We leave our bathroom window open for ventilation, which means we get to hear all sorts of neighborly noises (like the upstairs folks' daily ten-minute hark-spit-strangle session, and every lighter flick ever). A few minutes after the knockers gave up, I heard our next-door neighbor out in her back patio discussing something with a couple of guys. It sounded maintenancey, so I called the office and asked if there was anything going on that she knew about. The manager said she didn't know of any maintenance but had seen some cable guys wandering around. Well, that's one mystery solved. Why the FUCK they thought it was okay to try to open my door...that was still pending.

They knocked again while I was on the phone with her, and it turned out that a few years ago, the cable for another unit entirely had been run from the box outside our fence through the dirt of our patio. There were new people there now, and they needed to get at it. Through both our and our neighbor's back patios. The manager confirmed that that happened sometimes, but that they hadn't called her to let her know they'd be coming or she'd have warned me. Okay, I can buy that. And they did have the good sense to look embarrassed when I called them out on the doorknob. But this meant that I had to speed-clean the patio before sunset, because they'll be coming back tomorrow morning. Wish I'd known this BEFORE I washed my hair.

I'm on the fence about complaining to Time Warner, mostly because I'm pretty sure nothing will happen (due to nothing truly nefarious actually having happened). But what would have happened if I hadn't been waiting for them to go away, and the door had actually been unlocked? Does it happen often? Do they get charges pressed? Cable should not be such OMG SRS BZNS that your installers are willing to scare the living shit out of the neighbors just to get somebody's TV set up faster.