Be like Joe, sometimes

Me Grandpa Joe would lose his temper at the drop of a hat. Lord love him, it was often uncalled for and childish, something I believe even he would admit now. But let me tell you, some days I actually respect his loss of temper and want to emulate it. Yesterday was one of those days.

A customer brought in an Eel and said it needed a reverse switch. To save me time, he said (I don't doubt for a minute he tried to fix himself but couldn't in fact) he had bought a switch to me. I asked him to leave the machine as I had many repairs in front of him, but promised I would get to it promptly.

Now, I don't care what you're told, unless it's obvious you never take a customer's word on a repair. If a man tells me his machine doesn't run, the first thing I do is plug it in and hit the power button. With the aforementioned job, the first thing I did was put my jumper wires on at the reverse switch. The machine ran both ways; he had a problem in his wiring.

I called to tell him that, and to give him an estimate on rewiring the thing. His incredulous tone told me he wasn't sure he believed me. "But I'm sure it's the switch," he responded from his end of the phone.

That put me out a little bit but I kept my tongue. "Sir, I bypassed the switch. You've got a break somewhere in the wiring," I said. Again.

"But I tested it myself. It has got to be the reverse switch, man."

Those words set me off, truth be told. Yet I held myself in check, took a deep breath, and said, "My friend, you can come down to my shop right now, I will do nothing else to your machine, and I will show you. Your switch is fine. You need new cords."

That's what actually did happen. What I wanted to happen was to fly off the handle and yell at the top of my voice, "No! It does not got to be the reverse switch man! It does got to be the cords! I tested it, I know what I'm doing! If it was the reverse why didn't you have it fixed already instead of bringing it to me? If you knew what the hell you were doing, you wouldn't have brought it to me!" And so on and so forth.

He agreed to the price and I rewired the machine, even allowing him the $15 cost of the switch he brought me. I could keep it in my stock and would use it eventually. Yet when he picked it up he was still mystified that it wasn't the reverse switch. And I still held my temper. Barely.

At the end of the day it was the best thing to do.