Weekend Warriors

Yesterday I spoke of the one Friday - and it was only one, I swear! - where we refused to answer the phone after 3:30. There was a reason for that, beyond the obvious ones. Me Uncle John who we call Zeke summed it up well: nothing good ever happens after 4 o'clock on Friday. That's when the Weekend Warriors come out of the woodwork.

Now, I'm not against anyone having additional income streams. Indeed most of my adult life I've worked a second job trying to make ends meet. Further, this was much more of a problem when we still rented welding equipment. Welders were much more difficult to deal with than drain snakes, for reasons I will not bore you about. My blogs can bore you well enough without added exposition, although I do readily offer that service. You're welcome.

Anyway, there were guys who we only heard from late on Fridays, and to a tee they were all nuisances. One would order a welder delivered through rush hour traffic an hour away, and want the driver to wait while he did a 15 minute weld which typically extended to 45. Another would actually bring his work to the old barn, pay Joe for use of a machine right then and there only to take two hours for a 'quick' job, leaving at least one of us to close at 7 or 7:30. A third would have a simple request: take a welder to an industrial site in the wee hours of a Sunday morning for a day job, and ask us to pick it up late, all too often very late, on that same day. And so on and so forth.

We would do it, because that's how we did it forty, fifty, and sixty years ago. It would all start with a phone call after 4 on a Friday. We will not do that anymore. Thankfully, I will add. Although I do put in enough hours on weekends myself, I at least don't affect anyone else doing it.