called on others not to vent their frustrations on employees and staff of the utility company.

Mr. Powell, owner of Lines Food and Liquor Mart on Ord Road Warwick, took his forklift and held a BTC van on March 2 until repairmen got a company executive to speak to him.

"I became a hero of sorts to a lot of people,'' Mr. Powell said yesterday.

"But it was just a spur of the moment thing and happened out of frustration.

"In a reflective mode I probably would not do it again.'' And Mr. Powell said people imagined the incident to be more dramatic than it actually was.

"No one was in the van, and I just managed to get the forklift to raise the back of it slightly.'' While clearly happy that the incident got the attention of BTC Mr. Powell said that many of the repairmen were offended by his actions.

"I've met with some of their union representatives and we've smoothed that over and squared it all away now,'' he said.

"But I do not want people to take my actions as licence to attack and verbally abuse any BTC staff member or employee,'' he added. "That's not what it's about. I feel the executives at BTC have taken this as a very serious wake-up call.'' Since the incident BTC managed to re-route Mr. Powell's phone line through the Paget exchange and he said his service is now fine.