El Jalapeño: Baja man protests three-week CFE outage by hosting open bar in lobby

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LA PAZ, Baja California Sur — Demonstrating remarkable civic resourcefulness in the face of infrastructure challenges, a local resident whose electricity was cut off for three weeks converted the customer service lobby of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) into a temporary open-bar hospitality suite on Tuesday afternoon.

Equipped with a five-speed countertop blender, a sack of limes, coarse salt and bottles of tequila and damiana, the La Paz resident plugged directly into a primary outlet behind the ticket-dispensing kiosk, offering freshly blended margaritas to fellow customers waiting in line for billing dispute resolutions.

“If the federal grid cannot deliver electricity to my freezer, I must bring my ice to the grid,” said the resident, who noted that three weeks of unanswered service tickets and unkept reconnection promises had left his home appliances thoroughly non-functional. “The administrative process takes three hours anyway. It is simply good manners to offer refreshments while we wait for ticket number 47 to be called.”

CFE staff reportedly observed the operation with a mixture of bureaucratic neutrality and procedural deliberation, noting that while utility regulations prohibit unauthorized commercial vending in public facilities, current policy contains no explicit clause regarding the non-commercial distribution of frozen cocktails in waiting areas.

The impromptu tasting station quickly stabilized lobby morale, with several citizens in line offering to supply additional ice and fresh citrus in exchange for priority access to the blender’s frozen treats. One CFE employee estimated that the protest successfully reduced perceived wait times across the branch by about 40%, despite no change in actual ticket processing speed.

Utility representatives later confirmed that while the man’s power status remains under review, official policy guidelines are currently being evaluated to determine whether guest appliance usage in administrative lobbies constitutes a billable service tier.

The not-quite-so-powerless resident, meanwhile, promised to bring the rest of his kitchen appliances the following day if his service still hadn’t been reinstated.

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