.........on a light note. Dispatcher calls my cell (we used to be radio dispatched, until we franchised....bright yellow vans, 1 hour on time promises, new invoices, new people....but I digress thats another post in another forum all together) the dispatcher says, do you know where so and so city is? Yea, around 30-40 minutes from my present location I tell her.....ok when you've finished there head to so and so call me and I will give you the rest of the directions.....45 minutes later I pull into so and so....(I can tell that I'm there because I about half expect that the next living thing I see is gonna be a sasquatch or something closely related). I call dispatch, when she finishes I have a full size page from a yellow legal pad full with my scribbles on where I am supposed to go.... 30 minutes later I find the numbers on a tree near the road that is supposed to belong to the clients home that I am going to. I pull to the side and turn onto the drive that cuts through what looks like a mid-section of the rain forrest onto what I can best describe as a tractor path, I follow this little winding path an additional 2.25 miles and lo and behold there it sits the house that belongs to the numbers tacked onto the tree 2 miles back off the "main" drag. Except, this can't be right cause it's a mobile home and our company has a long standing policy to decline calls for mobile home systems ( don't know why, not my call ) so anyway this little old woman comes out of the home, dancing with a walker, and I'm thinkin' I don't give a damn if it is a mobile home, after that drive I'm fixin' somethin', so she greets me as I step from my van, hello ma'am, what's going on with your air conditioner today? It just ain't coolin' she says. Ok we're gonna see if we can help you with that I tell her, do you have a split system or is it a package unit? I don't know what it is she says....ok, well we'll find that out to....I'm gonna grab my toolbelt and we'll see whats goin on with her....I go get my belt and head back towards her home and as we're walking together I ask, where is your thermostat? I don't have a thermostat she says, ok how do you turn your a/c and heat on when you want it, I ask with a furrowed brow.....I use the little levers on the dashboard she says, with not as much as a curl in her lips......on your dashboard? I ask....ma'am would you mind showing me your thermostat and without missing a beat she begins a waltz with her walker on a b-line to a 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier it's so nice of your company to drive all the way out here to fix my car a/c...I'm thinkin yea it would've been if we had.....Ma'am we don't have the equipment, adaptors or the right refrigerant on our vans to fix your car a/c....anyway, how come you didn't drive it in to a garage to have it done? Well....I was driving my husband to the hospital, and I just thought it would be nice for him if it was a cooler drive......Damn! Damn! Damn! The rest of my calls were just gonna have to be pushed back, her husband sat on the sofa with more tubes entering and exiting his body than an old Carrier 19D I use to babysit. What else could I do, I drove to the Autozone bought the adaptors stopped off by my house to pick up a cyclinder of 134a out of my shed and went back and helped her give her husband a cool ride to see the Doc. Called my dispatcher when I was finished to tell her I was back on company time..she said the owner said you were never off company time.....he was payin the tab on the whole deal, plus the little lady give me a hug and a cold Coke on my way out the door........God! I love my job. Good weekend to all.
