My job can be fairly mundane at times, but some of the people you meet going into strangers houses can make for an interesting encounter.
The above picture was one of those interesting encounters. It was a call on a water heater in a part of the inner city where very bad things happen. There are many boarded up houses and various entrepreneurs on street corners plying their trades.
When I called the customer to verify the call, he told me to knock loud on the door he sounded like a young guy who could hear ok, but whatever.
When I arrived and saw the sign I just had to get a picture of it. The customer was a young guy; we went to the basement to look at the water heater. He was a very polite and well-spoken guy, he introduced himself as John, he seemed a little out of place for that neighborhood.
He was telling me about his background in computer technology and was showing off his incredible memory skills like how he uses a product key for his password and reciting back to me the serial number of the water heater. It was a fairly new unit that had some warranty left on it. I determined it had a leak and would need to be replaced; this was a 3rd party call so I called the manufacturer and gave them the info so he could get a new one. The women on the phone wanted to know he purchase date, the guy didn’t know. That's not unusual, people often forget and don't keep the receipt. Then the women needed to know where it was purchased. I looked at the guy and he gives me this Joe Biden in the headlights look.
It seems that Johnny Mnemonic can remember a string of random numbers but can remember which big box hardware store he got his water heater from less than two years ago.
It was then the guy started acting a little hinky.
He didn't seem so interested in straightening out this whole mix-up and was more interested in shutting down this whole investigation.
Then it hit me, I could tell as soon as I saw the thing it was a self install and I began to suspect the unit had been purchased at "Midnight Appliance Supply".
They don't give receipts there and they sure as hell don't do warranty exchanges.
The above picture was one of those interesting encounters. It was a call on a water heater in a part of the inner city where very bad things happen. There are many boarded up houses and various entrepreneurs on street corners plying their trades.
When I called the customer to verify the call, he told me to knock loud on the door he sounded like a young guy who could hear ok, but whatever.
When I arrived and saw the sign I just had to get a picture of it. The customer was a young guy; we went to the basement to look at the water heater. He was a very polite and well-spoken guy, he introduced himself as John, he seemed a little out of place for that neighborhood.
He was telling me about his background in computer technology and was showing off his incredible memory skills like how he uses a product key for his password and reciting back to me the serial number of the water heater. It was a fairly new unit that had some warranty left on it. I determined it had a leak and would need to be replaced; this was a 3rd party call so I called the manufacturer and gave them the info so he could get a new one. The women on the phone wanted to know he purchase date, the guy didn’t know. That's not unusual, people often forget and don't keep the receipt. Then the women needed to know where it was purchased. I looked at the guy and he gives me this Joe Biden in the headlights look.
It seems that Johnny Mnemonic can remember a string of random numbers but can remember which big box hardware store he got his water heater from less than two years ago.
It was then the guy started acting a little hinky.
He didn't seem so interested in straightening out this whole mix-up and was more interested in shutting down this whole investigation.
Then it hit me, I could tell as soon as I saw the thing it was a self install and I began to suspect the unit had been purchased at "Midnight Appliance Supply".
They don't give receipts there and they sure as hell don't do warranty exchanges.
6 comments:
A guy I knew was called to work on a furnace in a house in Detroit.
Turned out to be a whorehouse.
He was paid in cash.
He knew what was up.
He shot and killed the guy who came at him as he left.
Never looked back.
Ed, I used to carry when I had to work emergency service all hours of the night. Even though I have a permit, the company I work for will fire anyone for carrying a weapon. I don't carry anymore, but if I still had to work late at night, well suffice it to say, I would rather get fired then get killed!
Mark, were you working there when that one black tech was beaten so badly that night when he was in a bad part of town?
Can't remember the guy's name, Paul something. I remember Bob and Mike being really upset by it. The guy wasn't just beaten up, he nearly died, was hospitalized for a long time.
Glad they stopped the night service. Too dangerous in some parts of town.
Yeah I was was working there then, he was in a bad part of town at night, he was in a coma for a good while, he was never the same again, he was a good guy too
Wow.
Better fired than dead, is right.
back before we got cell phones if you were out on a call at night and got paged for another call, you had to find a pay phone and that could get tricky, one tech was in the hood and had to call in. someone walked up and shot him while he was on the phone, just for the hell of it, Thank God he survived, I was glad as hell when they did away with emer. service about 7 or 8 years ago!
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