People is People

I don't always know what to think of people. Okay, I typically know what to think of people. But as I'm trying to keep this blog G rated, or no worse than PG, I'll let that thought hang.

A man came into the old barn yesterday to buy a machine. I got it out, plugged it up, hit the on/off switch, and it ran. I let off the switch, put the unit into reverse, and hit the button again to show that it worked in both directions. You know, standard salesman procedure.

"Let me have that," he says, as he literally muscles me out of the way and tries the machine in forward and then reverse. All the while I stood and stared at him thinking, 'I just did that. Right in front of you. Why are you double checking me?'

Of course, maybe he knows people too.

Marty's Retirement

We've had odd ways of being paid at the Shop. One invoice was settled in all ten dollar bills. Another involved $1890 in singles. One fella paid me Pops in two dollar bills all the time, every time. But we were never paid in quarters until yesterday.

This particular client, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, has been a royal pest, a total nuisance, for as long as I can remember. He became so bad we threw him out about thirty years ago with a vow to never do business with him again. We eventually relented. No good deed...

Anyhow, he owed me a hundred fifty bucks for a cable installation. "I only got quarters, Marty. Can I pay you in quarters?" Sure, fine, anything to get Cloyce out of my hair, at least for the moment.

He came in an hour later with the change in a bag. Unrolled. "There's only a hundred, Marty, I'm sorry, but I need my machine. Can I bring you back fifty?" Yes, all right, fine. Just get out of here.

When I got home last night I decided to go ahead and roll the quarters. There was $89.80. Not only was Cloyce short, one of his 'quarters' was a nickel.

So you know what? I'm retiring, effective immediately. For Cloyce only. I even edited my phone so that his number will come up Cloyce I'm retired. He better enjoy that machine, because from where I sit this morning I will never work on his stuff again.

Doesn't he owe you $60.20, Marty? Indeed he does. But I'm certain he'll forget about it and will argue he paid in full when he tries to come back again, and to be rid of him for sixty bucks in this day and age is a bargain, a price I'll pay without thinking twice. I shouldn't have ever allowed him back in the door in the first place.

Lucky Seven

Some guys, I don't know what they're thinking.

I repair drain snakes; the bulk of you know that by now. And I have been very busy lately. By my whining, the bulk of you surely know that too. Yet I do want work coming in. I figure it's good to be eternally a week or ten days behind. That way, you know there's always something to do.

Seven, they say, is a lucky number. Perhaps. But 7 drains snakes for repair at once? That happened to me one day last week.

A customer brought in 7 broken main drain machines. All at once. Then he pleads, "How quick can I get one or two back?"

"I don't know. I have to go over them to see what they need!"

"Can't you do the easy ones first?"

"I don't know what the easy ones are until I check them out!"

Lucky 7, hell.

Take My Address

As customer came by yesterday. Yay me! Customers by and large are good.

He had a reasonably quick repair, so I elected to do it while he waited. He also wanted a colleague to meet him at my Shop for whatever purpose. "What's this address, Cosgriff?

"4850 Rosa Parks."

"4450 Rosa Parks," he said into his phone.

I corrected, "No, 4850."

"44850," he instructed his buddy.

"No, Four Eight Five Zero." I explained precisely.

"4050," he told his phone.

Forget it, I thought. Let them find each other. 

I fixed his machine, took his money, and he left. Without his friend.

Whatever. 

Electrocuting a young helper.

I had a customer come into my Shop one day for a chuck on the front of his machine. He had a thirteen or fourteen year old kid with him as a helper.

As I gathered my tools and the new chuck I noticed that the cord which should have had a push button on/off switch on the end had nothing but two exposed wires. I said, "I have on/off switches on hand. I could pop one on for you." This was more than a mere upsell, Marty sticking his hand in a  guy's pocket. To start the machine you had to have that push button switch.

"Naw, I don't need it Cosgriff. That's what the kid is for," explained the customer, pointing at the young teen.

Incredulous, I asked, "What do you mean?"

The guy explained, "I have the kid hold the wires and I tell him to touch them together when I want it on. Then I tell him to pull them apart when I want it off."

"You're gonna kill this kid," I quite emphatically replied. "Oh, he'll be all right," I was told.

I went into my office, brought out a switch, and began installing it on the cord of his machine. "I ain't payin' for that, Cosgriff," the idiot tightwad said.

"I ain't asking you to," I barked back at him. And I barked it too. "But I can't let this thing go outta here knowing how you're using it. You're gonna hurt that boy."

I haven't seen him since, and good riddance to bad rubbish. And contrary to the opinion of some, I know I ain't God's gift to humanity. But some things you just have to do simply because they're the right thing to do.

The hell with you

Is it ever acceptable to tell a customer to go to Hell?

Yesterday a man left a machine with me for repair. That's cool. That's what I do. He even bought the part he needed. That's cool too. I only have to charge labor. He wanted a receipt (I needed him to leave it overnight). That as well is cool. I would have given him one anyway; it's a standard business practice. At that point he left.

He returned within about 90 seconds and started taking pictures of his broken machine. While I stared at him he explained, "I just did some upgrades and want to be sure I get my machine back."

That's when I thought I should tell him to go to Hell and take his machine with him.  I didn't, but if I had, would have I been wrong?

Pushed too far

Me Pops could hold his temper very well. He held it often when he would have been within his rights to lose it. Still, when he let it go, you were impressed. He let it go once on a guy known as Jake the Snake. And not the wrestler.

I'm not sure exactly how Jake earned his moniker, but I have a suspicion. He argued everything. If a part was available in red he wanted to know why it wasn't scarlet. If told cables were readily available in twenty-five foot increments he'd cry he had to have one thirty foot long, nothing else would do. Yet most of all he argued price. He argued price until the day Pops was sick of it.

Jake came in for some ten dollar part. "Ten dollars," Dad told him.

"You give it to me for seven," Jake countered, demanding rather than asking.

That set Pops off. He slammed the part back into its bin and yelled, and I mean yelled, "Get out of my Shop. I don't want your business!"

"You throwing me out?" Jake asked, appalled. "I can buy you out ten times over!"

Pops barked back like a drill sergeant, "The Hell you can, 'cause I'm not selling. Now get out of my Shop!" Jake stomped out, and Dad stomped into his office.

You could get away with a lot with Pops. But you could still push him too far.

Don't go Mungo on anyone

No, Mungo! Never kill a customer! -from Monty Python's Dirty Fork sketch

Those are certainly words to live by. I have never come close to killing a customer. At least, so far as the police know. But I have snapped at a couple of them.

Several years ago during a period when we were extremely busy and running about one week to ten days behind in repairs a guy walked into the old barn. He had a machine which wasn't running and wanted me to take a look at it. I said I would, but that if it required anything serious he'd have to leave it and I'd get to it as soon as I could.

I followed him out to his van and he produced a little General Sewerooter Junior which had wires hanging out of the motor in a terrible jumble. A real bird's nest, my Pops used to say. It would have taken an hour simply to sort everything out, to get all the wiring back in place so that I might then start diagnosing the real problem. I shook my head and said to the man, "You're going to have to leave that with me."

He began, "Well all you have to do is,"

But I cut him off right there. "Then you do it," I replied, admittedly rather harshly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Then you do it," I repeated. "If it's all that simple, why are you bringing it to me? Why don't you have it done already?"

To this day I stand by that. Why are you bringing it to me if it's so danged easy? Why are you wasting both of our times?

I didn't kill him, but I haven't seen him since either.

Pops and the ducks

There were a few things he said which I try to live by. I was reminded of one such phrase recently.

I was quoting a repair to customer A as customer B walked in. 'A' feigned a heart attack when I told him the price. He then turned to B and said that I was killing him. I jokingly told B that he could leave, that I wouldn't need his business after I was through extorting A.

Anyways, A leaves and I began to deal with B. To my delight, B being familiar with what A wanted, he first remarked, "I don't know what his problem is. That was a very good price you gave him." I thanked him. It's always nice to hear that you're actually an honest businessman. He continued, "How do you put up with that?" referring to customer's A's gyrations.

"Water off a duck's back, Pops used to say," I told him. You can't let obnoxious stuff like that bother you. Let it seep away.

I try to remember that, because customers, hell, people in general, can be hard to deal with. Myself included, quite frankly. You just have to strive not to let it bother you. That whole incident was over in about 40 seconds. Why should it bug me? Okay, arguably I am doing that, but to a purpose. I'm using the incident as an illustration. Don't let those things trouble you. Let them flow off like water from a duck's back.

I don't think it a bad way to conduct yourself at all.

The toenail trimming consumer

Customers, they are the most important part of any sales business. They can be (they ordinarily are) the best thing about sales, and at times the worst. At other times they can be downright odd and unusual, and even slightly disgusting. Disturbing, really.

I remember one guy who sat down while I was welding an end on his drain snake cable. He asked for a pair of wire cutters. So I gave him one, and commenced upon the repair.

He began unlacing his boots. I didn't think much about that; I really only barely noticed it and dismissed it immediately, almost without thought. He was probably just tightening or adjusting the boots, right?

Pulling enough steel cable out of his machine so as to be able to work with, I ground the end flat and secured it in my bench vice. After screwing in a fitting and tacking a weld to ensure it would stay, I shut off my torch and turned to tell him his repair was done. But my voice caught in my throat. He had his boots off and was trimming his toenails with my wire cutters. Talk about being a little too comfortable in your surroundings.

I said nothing. I turned back to my workbench and began tinkering with another repair. Eventually the man said, "Well, what do I owe you?"

'A new set of wire cutters', I should have said. Instead I just stammered something like, uh, ten bucks.

It was surely overreaction, for they were only wire cutters and had been used to cut far dirtier things than someone's toenails. In fact, that idea by itself added to my disgust at what he had done. But after the man left I picked the tool up with a pair of pliers and threw it away. I replaced them with a new pair that afternoon. I simply didn't want to use them after that incident, and boiling work tools (if you're not a surgeon) seems stupid.

To this day I cringe at the idea of someone arbitrarily trimming his toenails with my tools in my workshop. I mean, really? Why would it even occur to anyone to do that?