MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Things the way they used to be.
The morning after a storm and power outages, the phones at Memphis City Hall would be exploding.
Not this day.
People who can work from home are doing it.
Welcome to “New Normal Land.”
J.T. Young, the CEO of Memphis Light, Gas and Water says his crews have been out in force, trying to restore power following the Sunday night storms.
“Of course, we are following the guidelines, wearing masks and all,” Young says. “So as we go about doing our daily duties, whether it’s restoration or other work, we certainly have to do things differently now than we used to.”
He says there are approximately 665 employees working from home. It’s resulted in some changes.
“There are a few glitches,” Young says, “... because we had to put this together rapidly. But we had a lot of people who worked real hard to get this pulled together pretty quickly, so we could minimize the number of employees in the workplace.”
MLGW has stopped cutting services for people who are in financial trouble. It’s been their policy for about a month.
“What we are asking them to do is pay as you can,” he says.
Customer service branch offices are closed, but drive-through service remains open.
“To this point, customers are continuing to pay their bills,” he says. “We haven’t really seen any real significant decreases, but of course time will tell. I’m not sure how that will go in the long term. We have seen a little bit of an aberration, but not very much.”