a visit from the electric company turns into mass confusion all around

Every 6 months or so we are graced with a visit from the electric company - it turns out that several apartments in our neighborhood have their electricity meters housed in the closet of our foyer.  Lucky us!  This was explained to us the last time the meters were read and I have come to understand the neccessity of letting the meter reader in without protesting the inconvenience of this situation.  No winning this one.  But today's visit proved most interesting...

I let the meter reader into the foyer this morning and explain that all of the meters are housed behind the closet door.  I point to the door, tell him to help himself, and excuse myself to quiet our dog - who usually pulls her super-cute Cujo routine when strangers enter our house.  I close the glass door that partitions our home from the foyer, round up the dog, and head downstairs to make coffee.  Once I make coffee, I decide to make some toast... then check my email... then write a few emails.  Maybe 10 minutes have gone by.  Then I head upstairs to grab the newspaper out of the foyer - and who do I run into but the meter reader!  Now in all of my past encounters with various electric company representatives, they have gotten their data and boogied out the door.  It is a 2 minute visit - tops - and never are there any long farewells or goodbyes.  But this guy was still in the foyer.  So I pop in and ask if everything is okay... and after a jumbled dutch/english conversation I realize that he has been waiting this whole time for me to come back from dealing with the dog to open the closet door that houses the meters.  Ooops!  I obviously open the door.

But it gets better.  Apparently there are more meters he needs to read and he would like to access the other closets in the house to get his data.  Believe me, I tried to explain that this was the only electric hub in the house... but language/ culture / whatever was against this reasoning.  So off we go to peek into the closets - ALL of the closets.  Resembling a bloodhound - the meter reader seemed to catch some sort of scent coming from our master closet.  I opened the door and he began to search in vain for the missing meters.  He moved my dresses to one side, he moved some of my husband's shoes off their racks.  He even moved the curtains and tapped on the walls.  Speechless, all I could do was shake my head and start walking back to the front door.

6 more months or so until the next visit!