Contractormag 3256 People
Contractormag 3256 People
Contractormag 3256 People
Contractormag 3256 People
Contractormag 3256 People

As a service business you need to serve all equally well

Aug. 5, 2016
The word “peoples” refers to all people of all races — the human race.  Democratic, Republican and Independent friends have posted dreadful blanket statements about the other party affiliations. Odd to have good friends at polar opposite ends of the political spectrum and that’s what brought the Muppets’ Peoples is Peoples line to mind. 
Image: iStock/ThinkStock.

I was contemplating that scene from The Muppets Take Manhattan movie the other evening while perched atop a 9/12 pitched roof taking superheat calculations on the heat pump system with its new compressor.

The character Pete says, “Hey, I tell you what is. Big city, huh? But not city only. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So peoples is peoples, Okay?

We had been called in to figure out why the air conditioning wasn’t working the day prior and had determined the compressor was shot — open winding.

“A new tenant is moving in tomorrow and they are having their grand opening at 6:30 PM. What are our options?”

This three-story building runs the full depth of the city block, sandwiched in among other buildings, and is almost on the square in center city York, Pennsylvania. A new condenser will require a street closure permit and crane with boom. R-22 system and no way to replace that three-story built-into-the-walls line set. The air handler with its evaporator coil resides above the suspended ceiling in the main office corridor — just inside the main entrance. Of course it does!

“I offered to let them use another vacant space, but they want the public to know where their headquarters are going to be located.”

After discussing the cost to replace the system components with a new R410a system vs. installing a new 4-ton compressor, she told me the building owner would be informed, make the decision, and she’d get back to me ASAP.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked who the new tenant was going to be. “This will be the York County Democratic Headquarters.”

As you know full well, running a service business absolutely requires you maintain your reputation or all will be lost over time. Your reputation is hard-earned over time — a very long time. Most of the prominent democrats who would be attending are already customers and seeing our trucks, technicians coming/going, and a sweltering grand opening would not bode well for maintaining our stature. I know you’ve been there — done that too.

We did not get approval to proceed until 11:30 a.m. — the day of the grand opening! We hadn’t been sleeping at the switch all morning and had lined up the crew who would be pulled from other jobs that could be somewhat delayed. The compressor was on tag-and-hold (last one in stock anywhere locally) at a local supply house.

It was a hot miserable job –— baking in late-day hot summer sun. Why, oh why, had the original installer chosen to perch this condenser on the only 9/12 pitched roof portion of the football field long roof that had an upper nearly flat roof just two feet away? Lugging the process nitrogen bottle, recovery tank for the R-22, two vacuum pumps (to speed up evacuating the repaired refrigerant system), bottle of R-410a up to the third-floor, up a step-ladder, hand-off through the roof hatch, and scramble up that 9/12 pitched roof was an exercise all by itself.

Working on top of a rooftop landscape always reminds me of the movie Mary Poppins. We’re not chimney sweeps, but none the less, there is something fascinating and enchanting about a rooftop jungle with panoramic views of the city and unobstructed scans of the sky. Off in the distance, we could see rain cascading off the back side of a dark storm cloud.

So there I was checking superheat while one of our techs was changing out the dirty filters on the air handler. I posted to my Facebook page that we were working on restoring the air conditioning for the York County Democratic Headquarters. Responses were immediate: Let em sweat/refuse to fix that and the other side You always got ours running when we needed help/glad you’re helping. Other posts don’t bear repeating due to the level of nasty. Politics and religion: two topics bound to offend half of any audience, which is why I never post nasty things on any topic — especially those two incendiary subjects. If you own a service business, you cannot afford to alienate half you customers!

The word “peoples” refers to all people of all races — the human race. All the nasty rhetoric spewed forth from the verbal diarrhea vomited from the mouths of our politicians has fostered an atmosphere where people put up posts on Facebook that would get their teeth knocked out (or worse) if they said the same things face-to-face.

Democratic, Republican and Independent friends have posted dreadful blanket statements about the other party affiliations. Odd to have good friends at polar opposite ends of the political spectrum and that’s what brought the Muppets’ Peoples is Peoples line to mind as I sat staring across the rooftop jungle at the waning sun at 8:00 p.m.

We all want the same things: a good life well lived; wealth (both monetary and richness of life); a decent job; health; great kids who become responsible adults contributing positively to society; and comfort, which is where we as mechanical contractors come in to serve their needs.

It doesn’t matter if they’re Democratic, Republican or Independent, what religion practiced, or what race your customers are: as a service business you need to be blind to all those issues and serve all equally well. For one evening, at least, the three registered republican technicians (they did ask) were told by the assembled democrats that we were their heroes.

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