#by Cantstandyuh

[prorevenge]

Never screw over your HVAC technician.

This is not my story, its been a while since I've heard the story but I'll try my best to get the details correct. I went to a local community college to get my HVAC certifications and the instructor was an old school, gruff, blue collar worker type guy. He owned his own HVAC company and would teach at nights after work. Dude was working like 60-70 hours a week and had been doing this since the early 90's when an older guy I knew in the industry was taking classes from him. Anyways onto the story, instructor will be refereed to as Joe.

His company and my school are located in Orange County California, an area with a lot of wealth. He lived out in Riverside so housing wouldn't be as expensive so its a bit of a drive for him to get to his work territory. One Sunday he received a call from a woman panicking, her AC unit in her "wine cellar" has stopped working and needs Joe to come fix it asap because wine needs to be in a consistent temperature. (I say "wine cellar" because down here we don't have basements in Southern California.) Joe explains that since it is Sunday it will be a triple charge since he doesn't get to relax much working so many hours every week. She agrees as her wine collection is worth 1000x the cost of fixing the AC unit. Joe rushes 2 hours out to her house in Newport Beach and she shows him to her wine cellar, which is a massive room with rows and rows of expensive bottles of wine on racks. He gets to work, checking everything on the AC unit. He found it wasn't getting power and after tracking down the circuit he found that the GFI had popped. You probably have one in your bathroom by your sink, and has a button to reset it if it pops. He resets the GFI and the AC unit kicks back on. Temperature hadn't deviated to much from setpoint and all things are looking good. Joe explains to the lady what had happened and to be careful with liquids around the outlet since if it trips it'll take out the AC unit. He then tells her since there was no work needed she'll just have to pay the Trip Charge which is $450 since its Sunday.

The customer, who we'll call Judy, was not happy about this. "All you did was push a button I could have done this myself! I'm not paying." Her and Joe go back and forth about her paying and eventually he leaves without payment. Joe isn't normally one to roll over but he's tired and wants to go relax on his day off. He drives home and relaxes trying to put her out of his mind.

That would be a shitty revenge story if she didn't call back a few months later, again on a weekend.

"Help my AC isn't working again! I tried pushing the button like you did and its still not working and I don't know how to fix it. You NEED to come out and fix it!!" Joe reminds her that last time she called she stiffed him and that he would not do business with her. She begged and pleaded that she'll pay for both trips in full and this and that. After some convincing Joe told her he would get to her as soon as possible. But since he is in Riverside it will take at least an hour maybe two to get to her. She says fine and they hang up. Instead of getting into his truck Joe cracks open a cold beer and waits.

2 Hours go by and Judy calls Joe back, "Are you close? Its getting warm in the room, this is an EMERGENCY!!" Joe replies "I'm almost there, traffic was pretty bad but I should be there in 30 minutes." 30 more minutes go by and she calls back "Are you close"???!!!" Joe "Yes I'm just around the corner give me a few more minutes." By this time its getting pretty late close to 7 PM and she calls back one more time "WHERE ARE YOU!!?!?!?!" Joe responds "Riverside." That was not what Judy wanted to hear "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR IN RIVERSIDE YOU SAID YOU'D BE HERE MY WINE IS GONNA BE RUINED!!" And then Joe hits here with "You should never screw over people you rely on" and hung up on her.

Most AC places don't take calls on the weekends or nights so we assume she lost her collection, but can't know for sure. Anyways point of the story is GFI's really only belong in the bathroom's and don't fuck over people you need.

(source) (story by Cantstandyuh)