I was taking our garbage cans out to the sidewalk last week, when our associate Al came running out of the loft in shorts.
It was eighteen degrees at 6 in the day, and Al had short shorts on. I thought Al may have awakened and remembered he had to put the trash out. I know folks who wear shorts to bed because they have adolescent kids. I laughed and asked Al if he forgot about the trash? Al said he wished. His oil furnace hadn’t turned off all evening, and it was suffocating and tepid in their house. I gave our help, however Al said he was going to call the HVAC contractor as soon as they opened. I was sure he knew I was an HVAC service tech, however I would not argue with him if he didn’t want our help. When I got to work, there was a new job order waiting in our bin. The secretary wrote a note that said I particularly would have handled the oil furnace problem before going to work. The job order was for our neighbor Al. When I knocked on his door, he looked a bit out of sorts and asked why I was there. I told Al I would not be here now if he had allowed me to look at the oil furnace earlier. Al shook his head and said the heat must have baked his brain… Al didn’t think about me being an HVAC serviceman. Al laughed then and told me he would have saved some currency if he had accepted our offer earlier. Al commented that he needs to pay the HVAC corporation, and all I did was smile and nod.