I noticed that this blog is actually getting views now, and I’ll be honest, that made me a tad nervous. But hey, there’s always that whole Delete Everything And Pretend It Didn’t Happen option. Furthermore, I’ll simply post one of my favorite words here and move on:
Fortitude: mental and emotional strength in facing difficulty, adversity, danger, or temptation courageously
___________________________________________
Thus far I have posted about situations here wherein we either turned down jobs, ran away screaming from potential jobs, or never heard back from the weirdos who had jobs we could do.
As I stated in an earlier post (I think…) the good customers or experiences aren’t ones people tend to remember. We do, though, because Tom and I are mindful of that. We like to remember the good customers so, when the… ah… difficult ones come up, we can take solace in the fact that for the most part, people are cool.
The recent 2-3 day torrential downpour we experienced here in So-Cal resulted in a call from a rather scared and, what sounded like, exhausted woman. She explained to us that her mother lived in a trailer, was old and sick (the mother, not the trailer), alone, and the roof in the trailer was leaking “everywhere”. She had to put her mother up in a hotel out of fear for her (declining) health until someone could come out and fix it.
Tom rushed down there the day we got the call, which was a maybe a day after the rain stopped. It seems the reason she called us so long after the rain started was that a few other companies had come out already and turned her down, primarily, because of the fact she didn’t have enough money to do what was really needed. And that, well, upset Tom and I a bit.
When Tom walked in, there were three fans blowing out the open door and windows to dry the place out. Despite that, the carpet, couch, bed… everything… was damp. It’s like the place didn’t even have a roof at all. To boot, the swamp cooler on top of the place was actually sinking into the roof. It was a bad situation all around.
*Morgan Freeman’s voice. Again.* Imagine, if you will, a loaf of bread. Now cut that loaf of bread up into slices while someone else holds the sides so it doesn’t fall apart. Then, after you are done cutting, they let go.
A stiff breeze or one stray golf ball were plausible threats to the structural integrity of this place, and such threats would cause the metaphorical result of what Mr. Freeman just narrated for us.
Tom told the woman he could do it, he’d let her pay whatever she could, and not to go with anyone else. He knew that no one else would know how to correct this with the type of budget the lady had to work with- it required some “improvisation,” so to speak. “Jury rigging” comes to mind too. I might even be so bold as to say, maybe, “expertise from 30 years of working in the roofing industry.” I also have a habit of putting “quotes” around things a lot. It sometimes gets “irritating.”
Anyways, Tom went to work. Within 2 days, this place was solid in terms of the roof. He ended up sealing everything and putting a flat industrial grade roof on top of the place, which few really know how to do on such a small scale… small being a trailer instead of a factory or something.
When the Big One hits… ya know, that earthquake everyone has been talking about for the past 45 years or so, the one so epic that reality itself is torn asunder, splitting a hole open leading to the Netherworld where the spirits of the damned come pouring out… this roof will withstand it.
*knocks on wood*
All that will be left in the smoldering, charred wasteland will be the cries of ghosts, the scurrying of rats and cockroaches, the cawing of ravens screeching “Nevermore!”… and this roof. It will be floating, pristine, radiant and regal, not even attached to anything… a beacon for man to find shelter underneath so he can rebuild the world of tomorrow from the ashes of bedlam.
Yes, children… I can see it.
*ahem*
Yeah so, this particular trailer has a roof with a 10 year warranty on it now. One we made, one that wont leak. One that would withstand an airstrike. We received a letter of thanks from this woman. She even put a great review for us on Yelp, which didn’t appear. But whatever. We’ve written that site off a long time ago.
*throws a tomato at Yelp*
