When working in the HVAC industry and in most construction related industries the company must work with customer schedules. This scheduling problem is typical and comes with the territory but sometimes the scheduling dilemma is a little more complicated than being there when the customer comes home from work.
There was a situation I recall having been told to me by a previous heating repair technician at my old job where a baby was involved. The mother had planned for the heating repair guys to come over and agree to work in between the baby’s naps. There was a problem in the baby’s room where not enough hot air was coming in to his room as was coming in the rest of the rooms of the house. There were other issues with the system as well but this was the main issue at hand.
The technicians came over and began work on the heating system but just as they seemed to have gotten started working the baby was down for a nap. The techs had to pick up their tools and move into a different part of the house to work on something else until the baby was awake again.
You can probably see how this moving back and forth in between a newborn baby’s frequent naps could start to get old. The heating guys had to carry and lug tools around and in the process lose track of where certain items were at and what needed to be done next. The whole stop and start process created inefficiencies in the job and a lot of frustration with the HVAC company techs.
On a different day the techs came back to complete the job and they were hoping for a quicker more efficient time at the house in order to knock out the job once and for all. The initial problem of scheduling the job in this way in the first place is solely the responsibility of the HVAC company so they really have nothing to complain about as they had agreed to this setup.
What do you think they did to speed things up this time? Well, they needed to finish things up in the baby’s room by cutting a hole in the ceiling. They soon discovered while in the room that the baby wast fast asleep in the crib right next to them.
With not a lot of thought the heating repair tech’s decided to place a drop cloth on top of the crib while they cut away at the ceiling. They thought that this would be sufficient to catch any falling debris from landing on the baby while they finished up the job.
The mother ended up walking in on the job as a piece of sheet rock fell onto the drop cloth and on its way down into the baby crib. The baby was fine but the mother was more than just frantic as she got down right violent and through the two heating repair company guys out of her house.
The guys didn’t fight back and left peacefully but there is a lesson here for customers hiring any kind of construction company. Many construction companies will have their quirks and unprofessional behaviors and it is almost unavoidable to see something you don’t like during a job.
When choosing a heating repair company in Tyler TX consider hiring a company that has a professional code of conduct as a part of their business process. Take reasonable steps to schedule them to come to your house when there are no baby’s sleeping around the job site 🙂 And finally choose a company that you believe will adhere to the scheduling arrangements you require without getting the feeling they are over-promising on how they will work while at your house.
No company is perfect but reasonable effort should be made to accommodate your specific situation. Accommodating customers is normal in the HVAC service industry so don’t be afraid to tell the company to park on the street while not blocking the mailbox, wear footsies in the house, and even to stay away from the sleeping baby (although consider moving the baby to another bedroom just to be safe.)