Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Funny how people are

I do heat and air conditioning work for a living. It's not for everyone, I can tell you that. I probably wouldn't do it if I weren't brain damaged! I often find myself crawling under a mobile home on the lookout for brown recluses, black widows, snakes of various varieties, raccoons, armadillos, possums, cats dogs, all those types of poo and anything people consume or excrete as well.

Mike Rowe's got nothin on me.

Anyway, we install air conditioners in pre-existing houses and new construction as well, and service them. Our demographic ranges from millionaires to nearly indigent people that my honorable to a fault boss often takes a loss on his bill trying not to make them worse off than when we arrived for the bill. He runs such a tight ship that he hasn't made more than 25K in a year since I've known him, and he does $250,000 in business on most of those years. He's a good man. Our nation would be a better place if they had half his sense of honor.

It's funny how a millionaire will build a fence to hide his new air conditioner, and the pensioner's gather around theirs and brag on their neighbor's new units. It's odd how the people who "live like animals" will pay you in cash and you want to cut them a break, and how the millionaires complain for the same bill and pay by check, late.

It's funny to me how few people know how an air conditioner works! It's a magic box in the back yard that they either do not want the neighbors to know they have, or it can be a prized possession.

It's funny to me how people who are "educated" and earn ten times an hour what an air conditioner tech makes, and then piss and moan when you hand them a bill or fixing their air conditioner that is less than they earn in a day. (the parts really are very expensive, the "wholesalers" charge outrageous margins on made in china parts. If you live in a big city, and your fan capacitor burns out, the capacior costs less than 6 dollars. But it's made in china, for probably $.05 each, and then shipped around the world and sold or 10,000% markups, with three times the failure rate of a US made GE capacitor. If your computer circuit board goes out you'll pay $300 for something that could be made out of stuff from radio shack, by mexicans who earn a quarter an hour and probably costs $10 to manufacture and ship to the wholesaler. It's marked up $290, and then the technician has to add on the customary 30% plus the service charge and the labor..... and who does the work, I mean the real work. The people who's hands actually touch the product. The people earning the 10,000% markups have manicured hands and mansions, and the rest of us get thumpped a crumb.

Funny how people who don't get their hands dirty, spend 99% of their entire lives inside an air conditioned space earning $100 of dollars an hour, expect the guy outside sweating to repair their air conditioner to work for minimum wage... and hurry up because it's up to 80% inside.

Funny which of those two groups are the "celebrated" ones.

I take my hat off to the guy who picks up my garbage every Tuesday and Thursday!

"And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

I take my hat off to the garbage man. He has moved a mountain. From my front yard, one garbage can at a time.

But I have to pay the Doctor $1500 to put 5 stitches in my finger?

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