Before we knew Bober (the narc), we knew Bober (the heat Nazi). He seemed to be on a one man crusade to make the house completely unlivable in his quest for minor cash savings.

It started with the electricity. The third floor of the house and portions of the second have electric heat. We were having a house meeting shortly after we'd all moved in, and we were discussing strategies for keeping the utility bills low. This was clearly a necessity, as the house is basically uninsulated, and Public Service of New Hampshire wanted a $1400 deposit against the high electric bills they expected us to accrue later in the year. The consensus position was that residents of the second and third floors should make sure their thermostats were turned off when the left for the day.

It took a long time to come to this conclusion, as Bober was unable to understand that a thermostat set to off wasn't using electricity. He seemed to think that electricity was still slowly leaking out, and the only way to cut this expense completely was to shut of the breakers and isolate the heaters and thermostats completely. We thought, by the end of the meeting, that Bober finally understood that this was unnecessary. We couldn't be more wrong.

Before Bober's miscomprehension of physics came back to bite us, he started in on the thermostat for the oil heat. During the day he'd turn down the heat to unacceptable levels. He'd come home late at night and turn down the heat to unacceptable levels. You'd wake up in the morning to find that the first floor bathroom had been closed all night and was near freezing during the period of maximum use. Talking to him didn't help, as any agreement you reached was soon abrogated. He just couldn't stop himself from turning the heat down.

During Christmas break, when several members of the house who are students left, things got worse. Bober decided to turn off the power to their rooms, "in case they'd left the heat on." This decision evidently came to him with the force of divine revelation, as he did it around five in the morning while the rest of us were still soundly asleep. Including some residents of the rooms he cut off. Most of the alarm clocks failed when the power was interrupted, even for the rooms where Bober realized his mistake and turned the power back on. Several people were late to work as a result.

We turned the power back on, and explained to Bober that:

1. Everyone had turned off their heat before they left.
2. People were still living in some of the rooms he'd turned off.
3. Some of the people who'd left had answering machines and were waiting to hear back on job applications.
4. And turning off the power to people's in room refrigerators would get nasty in a week or two.

Later that week he was at it again, turning off the power to several rooms and common areas. The porch light was disabled, and we have no street lighting to speak of. Further, the power was turned off to the first floor bathroom, meaning people had to shower with the curtains open in order to meet their tight morning schedules. It took us more than 10 minutes later that day to track down all of the breaker panels and restore power to the entire house. Again it was explained to Bober (the heat nazi) that his unilateral actions were leading to a fair amount of animosity, and we were tired of him literally leaving us in the dark.

Two days later he moved all of the food out of the refrigerator in the dining room to the refrigerator in the kitchen. The dining room refrigerator was mainly used by the residents of the house who are full time workers and were staying over the break, but Bober thought he could save some electricity this way. No one was told, and the first I knew of it was opening the refrigerator to find it warm, starting to smell, and empty. Just as an exercise, let's do the math on Bober's costs and savings.

While Bill was in Denmark, Bober was responsible for keeping the oil tank filled. As I've noted elsewhere that the Skunk House drinks about 500 gallons of diesel oil a month during the depths of winter, this was an important task. We only realized how important when Bober let it slide. We ran out of oil some time on Friday, but we didn't realize it until late that night. Aaron and I had gone to a party, and when we came home I figured I should eat something and have some water to drink before crashing for the next twelve hours. As we were both a little buzzed, there was more talking than cooking going on, and a fair amount of time was wasted in the kitchen. I found that I was getting cold, and I started to put my jacket back on. At this point I realized how ridiculous it is to wear a jacket in your own home, and I turned up the thermostat instead. And I turned it up again. And again. As our furnace sounds like a jet engine at takeoff, there is no question of when the heat is on, and the heat was clearly not on. After we established that there was power going to the furnace, we determined that there was no oil.

1:30 in the Ayem seemed like a bad time to wake someone and complain about the oil, so we just crashed and left it for the morning. When I finally crawled out of bed in the afternoon, I found that Bober had already called the oil company. There would be a $50 charge for an emergency fill, so Bober had told them to wait until Monday. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday mornings passed with me showering at the Dover pool, as the furnace supplied all of our hot water, and the remainder of the days were spent in the third floor rooms with the electric heat cranked. Mid day Monday the oil man came and filled the tank, but Bober slept through his repeated calls to come in the house and bleed the furnace lines. We looked at it that evening but could not figure it out for ourselves. Finally, we paid a $40 charge to have a furnace repairman come out and bleed the line. The net result of four days of freezing squalor was $10 saved.

You can read more about Bober (the narc) on our Collaborator's Page, and you can read about Paul's close encounter with Bober's car on our Police Page.

All text Copyright Brendan Impson 1999 unless otherwise noted. Images are copyrighted by either myself or Bill. If you want to use any of this junk, please contact me at brendan@bit-net.com