It is one of life’s imponderables that, every year, Pesach appears on the Jewish calendar at exactly the same time, and yet, every year, no matter how long in advance we start our preparations, and how carefully we plan our Gantt charts, we always end up only just managing to get in under the wire. This appears to be true whatever measures we take to minimise the load.
My sibling sympathies were stretched mighty close to their limit last week when, at the end of our pre-pre-Pesach phone conversation, my brother, who is spending Pesach this year with children and grandchildren at a European resort hotel, was unsure whether he would be able to spare the time on Wednesday for our pre-Pesach conversation, because of his packing.
As I outlined last week, my major preparations were completed on Wednesday, which I dedicated to baking. Bernice, on the other hand, faced, on Thursday and Friday, a mountain of cooking for the two days of Shabbat and Chag, and barely had time to draw breath. From where I’m standing, however hard she worked over those two days, it was certainly worth it, because we assuredly ate royally over the weekend.
As it turned out, I had a couple of errands to run myself, even if one of them was entirely self-imposed. Let’s start with the other, since that was responsible for me aging considerably last Wednesday.
For the last several years, we have had a water machine, which provides us with chilled, almost-boiling, and tepid filtered water at the press of a button. Having access to what are to all intents and purposes unlimited and immediately available supplies of water for both cold and hot drinks is, throughout the week, a real pleasure, and, on Shabbat and Chag, a great convenience. While many people would be hard-pressed to find a use for tepid water, I find it perfect for adding to flour to make bread dough. I recognise, as I type this, how I am simply oozing first-world privilege, but not having to play around mixing hot and cold water to get the right temperature for the sourdough starter to thrive is a real bonus.
The only drawback with our last machine was that, after quite a long period of working perfectly, once it had lulled us into a sense of security, it became rather unreliable, and started breaking down every couple of months. These failures often took the form of a slow leak. Eventually, we decided that we would stop paying insurance for free servicing, since the technician was only in Maale Adumim once every two weeks, and we would simply wait until the next technical failure, and then give up on the machine.
Fortunately, it responded to this threat by behaving for a good few months. However, a couple of months ago, it started leaking again, and, after a few days of laying towels alongside the slow leak and changing them every few hours, we accepted the inevitable. This happened shortly before we were due to go to Portugal, so we decided to try living without a machine for a few weeks before deciding whether we wanted to try again.
The trouble is that there are only one or two companies that offer a machine that provides hot water on Shabbat using a technology that is acceptable halachically (in accordance with Jewish law). These companies are not the market leaders, and so their technical, and other, support is not as responsive or efficient as that of the market leader.
By the time we returned from Portugal, we had more or less decided that we would give it one more go. I waited a couple of weeks until I judged that companies would be offering a special pre-Pesach deal, and then placed our order. As it happened, they only offered delivery to, and installation in, Maale Adumim on Wednesdays. The Wednesday 11 days before Pesach was, unusually, a day we were going to Zichron, and so I arranged delivery for last Wednesday, four days before Pesach. “No problem”, the sales rep assured me. “The technician will contact you first thing on the day to arrange a window of three hours when we will deliver and install.”
On Wednesday, I started baking biscuits for Pesach, growing increasingly aware that no technician had called. At 10 o’clock, I decided that ‘first thing’ had certainly passed, and so I called the service centre of the company. An automatic answering service that sounded deceptively efficient informed me that I was 31st in line, but recommended that, since my time was precious to them, I leave my number, and, when my turn came, they would call me back.
Yes, of course I experienced a sinking feeling, and of course I had my doubts, but when, five minutes later, the same service informed me that I was now 31st in line, I decided to take a leap of faith and leave my number.
Over the following two hours, I continuing baking. In sympathy with the cinnamon balls in the oven, a little round knot in the pit of my stomach heated up and hardened, until, at 12:17, I phoned again, at this stage more in hope than expectation. I was perhaps less heartened than I should have been to hear that this time I was only 26th in line. I decided to hold on this time, and, as I waited, I began to get myself used to the idea that we would spend Shabbat and Pesach with bottles of water chilling in the fridge, and water staying hot in an electric urn. After all, I reminded myself, this was undoubtedly far better conditions that the Children of Israel faced when they left Egypt.
Astonishingly, the numbers started coming down, and, very shortly after I had been informed that I was 18th in line, I got through to a real, living, breathing person. I succinctly explained the situation, and the real, living, breathing person immediately responded: “You’ve come through to the wrong department.” (I, of course, hadn’t ‘come through’ to anywhere; the system had delivered me.) “I’ll put you through to Sales.” “Now we’re cooking,” I thought. “Perhaps we will go to the ball – or at least drink water – this Pesach, after all.”
Within 30 seconds, Sales, in the form of another real, living, breathing person, picked up my call. I succinctly explained the situation, and the real, living, breathing person immediately responded: “You’ve come through to the wrong department. I’ll put you through to the Service Department.” “No!” I screamed, only milliseconds after the real, living, breathing, but clearly not thinking person had transferred me back to the queue I had left a minute earlier, where I was now 24th in line.
Around this point, Bernice started ensuring that she kept at least one room between myself and her, as I grew more and more enraged. Clearly, the company had taken far more orders than they could ever fulfil in one day, and they were simply delivering the machines to the people who had had the foresight to make it clear that, if the machine did not arrive in time for Pesach, they would cancel the order. Why, oh why, had I not hired some neighbourhood teenager to house-sit for us on the previous Wednesday and take delivery? Had I learnt nothing in 38 years of living in Israel?
I spent the next hour gathering every last reserve of self-control that I could, and, when I felt as psychologically ready as I would ever be, I phoned again. I was 16th in line, so things were clearly looking up. A real, living, breathing person picked up within three minutes, so clearly the numbers 31, 18, 24, 16 were generated at random purely to amuse the service staff.
“Good afternoon. How can I help you?”
This time, I didn’t succinctly explain the situation. Instead, I very calmly said: “Before I explain the situation, let me make something clear to you. When I have explained the situation, you are going to realise that you cannot help me. At that point, do not transfer me to another department. We have already tried that over the last five hours, and it doesn’t work. Instead, I want you to put me on hold, use another line to contact the person who can help me, confirm that they can help me, tell them to phone me immediately, take me off hold and tell me that someone will be phoning me immediately. Will you do that?”
“Please explain to me what the problem is.”
“First, you have to agree that, when you can’t help me, you will put me on hold, use another line to contact the person who can help me, confirm that they can help me, tell them to phone me immediately, take me off hold and tell me that someone will be phoning me immediately. Will you do that?”
“Please just tell me how I can help you.”
“Not until you agree to do as I have said.”
“I understand. What’s the problem.”
“I don’t need you just to understand. I need you to agree to do it.”
“Yes. I’ll do it.”
Then, and only then, . I succinctly explained the situation, adding an explanation of how previous calls had failed, and the real, living, breathing, thinking person immediately responded: “Please hold the line.”
She put me on hold, which was, to my huge relief, accompanied by a completely different piece of muzak from the ‘waiting for someone to pick up the call’ muzak. I held the line until just before the point where I would start to believe that I was wasting my time, and then, wonder of wonders, my thinking service rep took me off hold and informed me that I would be contacted “within the next three minutes”.
I thanked her profusely, wished her a Happy Pesach, hung up, and fought to suppress the conviction that I would never receive a call. However, not within three minutes, it is true, but no more than five minutes later, an installation technician called me, to confirm my address and say that he would be on our doorstep within half an hour.
Which he was, with a brand-new matte black machine that almost disappears under the kitchen cupboards, and a story about the technician who should have installed our machine having had an accident. Who knows whether that is actually the case? However, at that stage, I was prepared to cut the technician some slack, not least because he was quick, efficient, tidy, pleasant, gave us his number and assured us he would arrive after any call for service within no more than 48 hours. He even admired my coconut pyramids.
The happy ending is that the water was piping hot and refreshingly cold all through Shabbat and Chag. (I’ll let you know about the tepid when I’m making bread again in another week or so.)
I promised you earlier on accounts of two errands. However, the water machine has taken almost 1900 words, in much the same way that it took 5 hours on Wednesday. So, the other errand will have to wait until next time, unless something more urgent turns up.