Personal Space Sir...Please!!!

The customer I'm about to write about was not a pain in the butt or anything, just more of a nuisance. He was what I like to call a follower. EVERYTHING I did, he was right there, three inches away. No matter where I walked, he was there. Now just a side note to anyone out there that might need a person to come to your house to fix something, you don't need to follow them! Most of the time they know what they are doing, and you just get in the way. Now I haven't smoked in a little over 3 years, but not this guy. Not only right up my ass, but smoking that damn cigarette right next to me. He was a mechanic that works from home, so his parts, tools, motorcycles, etc...were inside and outside the establishment. And so was a lot of other crap too, reference pic above for example. Once again I get the life story of this guy as I'm TRYING to do my job. And guess what, he's on disability, big surprise. Now this guy had many suggestions on how I could do my job better and more effectively. Why does it seem that these type of people attract or gravitate towards me? He is now fixed and happy, and I'm so glad his women never got out of bed the whole time I was there. Not the mattress you see in the picture, she had her own room, and her own mess. What is it about women and their messes? It's got a different tone to it, kinda like an unnatural feeling. Speaking of women, the other day I had a knick knack fruitcake. If you've ever seen the movie Joe Dirt, when he meets his real parents for the first time, all the clown crap they had. Imagine that but on a much larger crazy person scale. She had little trinkets of the most off the wall crap, nothing seemed to go together except the fact that they were all small. Now why would anyone put up so much stuff that is hard to dust around is beyond me. But to try and tell someone that doesn't care about each and everyone of them is just crazy talk lady. "I'm on a time schedule." I tried that 6 different times throughout the walk thru. I now know more about ceramic shelf shit than I should. I did leave her a phone number to a coworker in case she ever needs anymore help or just someone to talk too...LMAO! He has no clue, and I'm not telling him.
Hope everyone has a safe and Happy Thanksgiving,
Marc

Just A Vent

This post is more of a venting session about my lovely Saturday. The day started off about normal, nothing odd until the first call. I was calling  ahead to make sure someone would be there. Well the customer wants me to diagnose the problem over the phone. Now this is literally impossible to do from 15 miles away, but we try to make all customers feel good about there input no matter how  unrealistic/stupid it might be. I get there and it's an older gentleman. Now everything he says to me is at yelling level. And he explains that he is on oxygen also and can't be off it for too long. Very loudly and very early on a Saturday morning. While he stands there watching me do my thing, he's breathing/snorting like a bulldog looking for a toy stuck under the couch. Like 10 minutes of this breath, snort, yell, I thought he wasn't supposed to be off the oxygen for long?! Once I got done with that my next trouble was another older fellow. He was fine, no trouble with him. Win for me there. Next job was an escalated order from my boss, now these hardly EVER go good, just for the fact that if my boss got it, then someone has called because they are pissed off! But we try to stay positive glass is half full. I get to an old single wide that looks like it got here via tornado, but "Everybody has to live somewhere!" I knock on the door and a guy walks out bare footed and bleeding? Now when I say bleeding, no ER or zombie apocalypse crap, but bleeding enough for a few band aids. His feet were bleeding which were almost at my eye level since he was on the porch and I was on the ground. Not very warm feeling to be around someones dried out, bleeding, needing a pedicure footsies. He was also bleeding from one elbow and both hands. His 2 dogs had just gotten into a fight and he had to break them up. Fair enough. Now his grandson which was probably like 10 was with him. This kid was about 8 inches from EVERYTHING I needed to do. Just an FYI to anyone out there, if a repair person comes to your house, please keep all children out of his or her way. This kid wouldn't shut up either, he asked me everything except how children were conceived. Every once in a while the old man would yell "get the hell out of his way, go play with the dogs!" Wait, you mean the ones that just used you as a chew toy, oh ok? Did make me chuckle a little I won't lie. Now my final customer of the day was fine until after I left. He called me because he couldn't get his laptop to work wireless. No big deal, I can walk him through this over the  phone on my way back to the office. Now the drive from where I was when he called back to my office is around 20 minutes, 20 minutes! I got back to the office, unloaded my stuff from the van to my personal vehicle, took what work stuff I needed into the office, got to my desk and put everything away. At this point it was in the range of 25-30 minutes on the phone with him just trying to explain to him how to plug an Ethernet cord into his laptop then into the modem/router. We never got to the point in which I would have had to explain how to get into his router. Seeing that this was going nowhere anytime fast, I disconnected the call. Wrong thing to do? I think not, people can only laugh for so long before you need to walk away.

Hope you have a great Sunday people, and thanks for listening,
Marc

Dog Gone It!!!

Today's tale or tail is about a certain couple and their pet community. Now this couple is probably in their late 20's to early 30's, and have around 35 dogs. Yes you read 35, and I meant to type 35. Now any other serviceman out there, no matter where you live, has encountered a house that has way too many pets in their home. But where I live you don't have to own a kennel licence if you have more than say 2 or 3 dogs like in some places I've been. With that said, the dogs are all small dogs, nothing over the size of a Pomeranian, and from what I gathered are let out in shifts. Like 7 dogs are let out at a time, then another 7 etc... Almost like jail. Now when I got there I knew they had dogs, just not the amount. All the small dog yapping made me want to scream, imagine what the neighbors think? The house was a mess on the outside with 2 ft high grass next to all fencing, a couple of cars that obviously used for storage at this point. Some old plastic pieces of what might have been a child's play set, old used oil in buckets, rusted tools, you get the point. The trouble was inside, OF COURSE, and when the man of the dog house came to the door, a stink of wet dog slapped the living crap out of my nose once he slung it open. He let me in and apologized for the mess, LOL, and then showed me what I was looking for. Now the linoleum floors only clean spots were where people/animals had made a trail. Everything else was a little bit thicker and had pieces of hair and food (I think) locked into it. Stuff was stacked on top of stuff, and the amount of kennels in this place, you would have thought you were at the humane society. Now there are two desks set up next to each other and you had to take the eastward trail in the house to get to them. But the amount of money these people had spent on their computers REALLY blew my mind. You know you can hire a person to come and clean your place for a lot less than those computers cost, right?! The sad thing is after about 20 minutes in this place I could no longer distinguish good smells from bad smells, and I worry about this young couples future, if you can't smell it on you then you don't know why people are looking at you like that. And then you get a bad outlook on society and do something like get more dogs and blame everyone else. I made up the last part, they might know they stink and just don't care.
Marc

Homo Gawd?!

Today I write about a place that is in our coverage area, it is, shall we say, a campground for just men. When I first started with this company I had heard of weird happenings at this place from other servicemen. Now the older gentleman are very religious and very unhappy with what the patrons of this establishment partake in. Whatever. So on a nice spring morning I got a job and started towards the address. I pull down a gravel driveway heading into the woods, I come to a gate. On the other side of this gate is a small building, a check in booth I guess you would say. Out comes a little fellow with the tightest t-shirt I've ever seen on a person in my life. Once he spoke I knew where I was, the place the elders spoke of. Now I don't give a rat's butt about what people do in their spare time, besides I'm working and I have to be professional. The little fella gives me directions on where to go to meet the person I need to about the trouble. I drive up this long road through the woods to a log cabin on the hill. As I'm pulling up, there is a gentleman wearing Daisy Dukes and a Brawny style button up shirt that is tied in the front at the bottom, with no buttons buttoned. He starts to skip/run out of my way telling that I can park here as he points to where he just was. I park, grab my stuff and start walking towards the door. I have to walk up onto a deck to get to the door, and the Daisy Dukes character is on the deck already speaking to another guest saying "You just don't know how hard I was trying to get you to $#%@ me last night."  I automatically blurted out "SERVICEMAN RIGHT HERE!!!" which I don't know where it came from but it did...lol. I got kind of a weird look from them both but hey, if I have to be professional, I think the same respect is due my way. Well I get inside and another person greets me and says they will get the boss, be right back. All of a sudden from around the corner walks a midget?! Instantly in my head I'm thinking, their efin with me...they gotta be. It was like they were throwing everything at me to see if I would break, but I can take it. Why you might ask, because I find life funny, and till you do some weird freaky deaky stuff I'm not cracking. The problem got fixed and things went more normal after that. But on the drive out you have to pass the pool, now who would have known that men like to sunbath nude... And for those ladies out there that might think this is not a bad thing, this was not your Chip and Dale dancers, it was more like Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. Now I don't have to work in that area much anymore, but when I did I met some of the workers there that were very nice. Kinda funny, they called me because their main gate wasn't working properly and wanted me to meet the gate guy there. No problem, come to find out, the gate guy was VERY RELIGIOUS and refused to step on the grounds. Now how can you work for a company but refuse to fix a problem, just because of where it's at? I told them to tell him, that he needs only to come to the gate, and that your not inviting him to a pool party!
Have a good day all,
Marc