Tales from the Trenches, stories forged in the fires of experience.
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Hello everyone, thank you for joining Tales from the Trenches.
Gerald Bergrin, thanks for joining us today.
How's it going?
It's going great.
So, we were having a little discussion about Tales from the Trenches and stories from the
field and how to prepare new technicians for that first day out on your own.
And it might not even be your first day, it just may be a day.
I mean, you might have been out in the field for six months, nine months, a year and you
get sent out to a job and you go, oh man, what am I doing?
Yeah.
Blow something up here.
Yeah, exactly.
So, let's talk about that fear.
Let's talk about those things we don't normally hear because we can go through training, but
are we going to go through training on what do you do when something goes wrong, when
something goes bad?
Because we're going to have those experiences.
So let's talk a little bit about that and some of your own personal experiences.
Yeah, I'd say that's one of the things.
I didn't go into a formal trade school.
I did classes with Johnstone University and things like that.
But, you know, get some book knowledge and so.
But yeah, there's the book knowledge doesn't tell you, say, hey, what if the thing catch
on fire or what happens if, you know, something goes sideways and we blow up a compressor.
What if I let the smoke out?
Yeah, exactly.
Where's that magic smoke?
How do you put the smoke back in?
Yeah, exactly.
They didn't teach me that.
I've never seen a thermostat smoke.
Where does that happen?
Is that capacitor puking?
What happens if I turn this back on?
Why are there sparks flying?
This compressor makes this funky sound when I turn it on.
Is that normal?
So, yeah, there's been a lot of that and a lot of like what I learned was just trial
by fire.
As I mentioned earlier, it's just that, you know, I had a really good guy teach me a lot
of stuff and sometimes what he would teach me would be just, you know, trial by fire
and just he'd give me a little bit of a
knowledge to do something and, you know, to be safe with it and say, here, go to it and
give me a call if you got any questions.
Well, I thought one time I was changing out of a compressor that, hey, I got this.
It was a walk-in cooler and changed a lot.
And one of the things I couldn't remember is he told me was, you know, how do you charge
your refrigerant?
There's a couple of hours, dump the stuff in there and fire that thing up.
And, oh, man, it sounded horrible.
It sounded like it was eating a bag of hammers.
Oh, Lord have mercy what I do to this thing.
What did I do wrong here?
Let me backtrack and think about it.
Yeah.
So I flooded the compressor and so, yeah, he was laughing his head off though.
And it was good experience though.
Like, yeah, don't flood the compressor when you first, you know, charge it up.
And so there were some definitely good learning experiences from those.
But that's the thing, you know, I learned a lot was that, you know, what you will make
mistakes is just what's going to happen.
It's not a perfect world out there.
Stuff does hit the fan.
And trying to prepare yourself for that.
I almost called this series the do as I say, not as I did series instead of tales from
the trenches.
Yeah.
We have these experiences that we need to share and we need to prepare people mentally
for that because it's difficult when we learn how to do something.
We go out on our own.
Now all that pressure is on us and hopefully it's going to go right.
But what happens when it actually goes wrong?
How do you walk up to that homeowner and say, I know your unit was working fine before I
got here to service it.
But now it's not.
Yeah.
And I've had that conversation with a few customers and especially there's these people
who are just, they're like, you know, these highly important people.
I told them, well, guess what, you're not going to have heat for a few days.
They're like, what?
You just were supposed to do a maintenance.
Yeah, I was doing a maintenance and something broke.
And I actually, if your system's so old, I don't have that part.
That's exactly right.
You know, and sometimes you just have that honest conversation.
And even though they yell and scream and dance on top of your head for doing that, you just
kind of like have to say, yep, I made the mistake and I apologize.
We'll get it done as fast as we can.
And, and just start to have a little bit of thicker skin from it.
So, yeah.
And having an honest professional conversation about things.
I always bring it back to the same analogy as, you know, when you go to the doctor, do
we go to the doctor because something is wrong or do we go to the doctor to try to find something
before it actually goes wrong?
So a lot of what our job is, is for that.
We're there for preventative maintenance.
And if you think about, say on that furnace, you know, there are a lot of things inside
of that furnace.
You have tubing that could be dry rot and just sitting there waiting to be touched.
So it's going to crack and be brittle.
You have collector boxes on condensing furnaces that could have small cracks on them.
And as you start moving things around and actually looking to find problems, you can
find problems that may have not presented a fault before that may now.
There's so many things, you know, metal on 80% furnaces coming off from a flue pipe that
may have been barely holding together.
And you get in there, start touching it and all of a sudden it just becomes brittle.
It's like a cookie and it just crumbles in your hand.
And you have to go to the homeowner and go, I have to shut this down right now.
Even though it was working when I got here, I have to shut this down and fix it properly.
And that's not always the easiest conversation to have, but it's the reality.
Yeah, it is. And yet also just the honesty of it is what I think has, you know, been
the best part, you know, for the customer is that it's like, yeah, you know,
it was working when I got here.
And then, you know, like you said, you know, got brittle joints because you even being
like, I remember one time finding a 90% and the flue pipe, you know, just had a weak
joint in the PVC.
I just, I showed up and let me clean this thing and pop.
Oops.
But thankfully something like that's easily repaired.
But, you know, having the honest conversation with the customer too is like, hey, you
know, this is just not good.
We need to get this fixed properly.
You know, it may have been attributed to what I did for the maintenance or whatever,
but, you know, if we have that honor of conversation, people really appreciate that.
They do.
And then they just appreciate you more and want to have you back knowing, hey, this
guy is honest at least, maybe he screwed up and broke my system, but, you know, he
was honest about it.
So he didn't try to hide it.
Oh yeah, that, that, that, oh yeah, that was there when I got here, you know.
Right.
And I find documentation is very, very important.
You know, if we see something that is bad, you know, if it's a, say it's a piece of
metal on a flue pipe and we go to touch it and we stick our finger through it, grab a
photo of it or take the homeowner down and show them, look, this is actually what's
going on.
So this was so paper thin that when I touched it, my finger went through it.
This should have been changed probably a long time ago.
It just wasn't found.
And so now we have to fix it.
It's one of these scenarios that now we are aware of a situation and that's what I'm
here for is to prevent further issues.
So now let's discuss the proper way to move past this.
Let's get this fixed and get this back into proper operation.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, especially, um, I'm up on the coastline here.
We got a lot of corrosion on these heat pump coil.
Man, all the salt water I can only imagine you sneeze on it and the coil is gone.
Right.
Oh my gosh.
Um, well, you know, let's close that up and see how, but you know, a lot of the
times it's just telling the customer, it's like, look, you live on the salt air, man.
And your salt air is eating your coil up.
And so yeah, having that conversation with a customer is like, you know, I show
up to do the maintenance.
As soon as you just barely touch that thing, crumbles up, you take a service door
off or something, the whole coil starts to crumble in front of you.
Wow.
Yeah.
And so the thing, like you said, was have a picture and you can document that.
And that not only helps the company, but it helps you out too.
That it's nice to have, you know, the tools like that to take those pictures
and documents.
So it just saves everybody from a lot of headache.
And, you know, I remember before we didn't have those things and it just kind
of like the back and forth of he said, she said, you just have to also live with
that too.
It's like, well, okay, we'll just have to eat this one as it were, because we
don't have all the documentation per se or photos and stuff like that.
We didn't carry cameras with us as part of our tool bag.
I wish I did.
So many people, you know, ask about some of these crazy jobs that it used to
work on and scenarios that I encounter and I go, all I have is in my memory
because we didn't have the digital technology.
We didn't have phones that had cameras in them 20 years ago.
And so that has changed things.
So now we can send homeowners photos.
You know, I can remember my first year talking about corroded coils.
I remember my first condenser.
I was a young technician.
I was out on a call on my own.
It was supposed to be just a service.
And if anyone's encountered a condenser that's been in a backyard, it's had a
dog regularly urinating on it.
You know, you can see a little corrosion at the bottom, but boy, when you hit
it with a garden hose and it just disintegrates and like the whole coil just
goes, and you look at it and go, oh my gosh, what just happened?
So I actually went to the homeowner and went, okay, I've got to borrow you for
a minute because you're just going to have to see this for yourself to
understand that I didn't just do this intentionally.
So I took them out and actually handed them the garden hose and said, why don't
you go ahead and wash this because a regular preventative maintenance is to
keep the condenser coil clean.
Go ahead and wash this a little bit.
And when they seen all of the condenser just crumbling and falling out, they
went, what caused that?
And then I was able to go, well, that's from urine from the dog.
But I wanted you to see that I wasn't out here doing this because when I first
seen it, I just went, what do I do now?
So I actually brought them in.
So it's very important to keep that homeowner aware when you see something
that's not right, step back for a second, think about it, and then start, you
know, figuring out how to properly address this and be professional and be
honest about it.
You know, they want you there to catch things before they go wrong.
So when they go wrong, maybe even unexpectedly, you just had to be
prepared for that conversation.
Yeah.
Like I said, just being professional about it, you know, professional is not
covering up and like, yeah, I don't know where that came from kind of stuff.
And, but having that, you know, tough skin to own up to your mistakes or own
up to finding things is, you know, definitely key because, you know, a lot
of people just appreciate that right off the bat.
I mean, some may still yell and scream at you, but still they appreciate that
honesty of just like, oh, thank you for finding this and helping me out.
I mean, I talk about the dog on the coil and yeah, I remember finding one at a
renter's house and the landlord always, you know, skewered the tenants for it.
Well, hey, you know, what's between you two is between you two.
Right.
I'm trying to do my job.
This is, you know, I'm just here to do my job.
This is what I found.
And so, you know, also being that go between of like, Hey, you know, you're
the representative, the landlord and having that go between kind of thing.
Also, you know, can be the tenant may hate you, but you know, landlord loves
you and right now you just can't make everybody happy.
So, you know, it's just sometimes you're end up being the bad guy no matter
what, but if you keep it professional and just be honest about it, you know,
and be upfront with people, let them know that really helps when you're
having those, you know, oh nuts moments as it were.
So absolutely.
It may not even be something that we've created.
I remember one scenario that I had, I had just did a service and maintenance
on an air conditioner and I got a call a few days later that the AC was out and
the homeowner was irate.
You were just here servicing this.
How could I be having problems?
You were just here.
And I'm like, well, so let's calm down.
Let's step back and let's find out what the problem is.
And then we'll address it together.
And I was still pretty young.
I mean, it was, it was a little nerve wracking.
The homeowner was very, very irate.
So I show up to the call.
They're still, boy, they're just barking at me all the way down the stairs to
take a look at things and out in the yard.
They're just barking, barking, barking.
So I put the gauges on it and there's zero refrigerant in the system.
And I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Okay.
Hold on here.
So either this is something maybe I did, maybe there's something that I missed.
Well, let's walk through this.
So kind of looking around, trying to find it, put a little bit of nitrogen on it.
And boy, just goes, it just drops really quick.
Man.
Okay.
So we've got something.
So I keep the homeowner informed.
I said, this was full of refrigerant when I was here.
Now it is empty and there's a leak in this thing pretty significantly that has
happened since I was here.
So let's spend some time trying to find it.
So we're walking around.
And so I walk back downstairs and there's a group, there's like five teenage boys
all hanging out downstairs, right?
And they're all acting a little bit funny.
So I've got the homeowner with me and I'm looking around and I look up and I'm
following the line set and all of a sudden I see a wet spot on the line set.
Oh, what do we got here?
So I walked the homeowner over.
I said, so we shouldn't be seeing wet spots on the insulation.
So something's happened here.
So I take my knife and I open up the insulation right there and there's this
little bitty hole right in the suction line.
Ooh.
And then they go, did you miss that when you were here?
No, I don't think that that was actually here.
Well, what would cause that?
Did you puncture that?
No, I didn't.
Let's think about this for a second.
So I'm standing there and I'm looking at this insulation and I look across the
wall where all these boys are hanging out on the couch and right behind them is a
dartboard.
But it's like 15, 18, 20 feet away from where this line set is, right?
It's a pretty good way.
It's not standard dart throwing distance.
It's over by the stairs.
And I'm looking at this and I go, I walk over to the dartboard and I grab the
dart and I walk over and I insert it into the suction line and it fits.
And the homeowner looks at me really funny.
And I said, so which one of the boys was trying to see how hard they could
throw a dart?
And the entire scenario changed.
Then I was the savior because I found the problem.
I called the boys out.
And then you're right.
It went from the homeowner conversation with me to the homeowner conversation
with the boys.
It changed the dynamics.
But sometimes we have to keep that calm.
I mean, it's rough to try to be able to think when you have that pressure going
on, that homeowner just barking at you like a dog.
Yeah.
Maintaining that calm is key for sure.
I mean, you know, especially when you, you know, remember working on one of
the newer style electric furnace of the relays and stuff.
I went to check amps on one of these things and little did I know, I pulled an
amp clamp off and it was all crammed in there and something pulls off one of the
connections.
Didn't realize it was loose and you couldn't see it.
And the whole thing just grounded.
Yeah.
It went fried everywhere.
I went, Oh, yeah, that's, that's not good.
How do you explain it?
That's yeah.
How do you explain that to the customers?
Well, I was just doing the maintenance, but you take a deep breath and, you
know, gather your collection and you know, the, like say customers barking at
you, you know, saying how, you know, calling you, insulting you.
Right.
Did I just fry my furnace?
Yeah.
You fried my furnace, you blankety blankety, you know, um, and I say, you
know, it, it sounds degrading cause that's, that's the hard part when they
start to degrade you and stuff like that.
But again, you just kind of take a deep breath, you know, and collect yourself
and, um, yeah, keep that professional mindset of being honest here and, you
know, do what we can to, you know, expedite this and get this repaired
as fast as we can.
And, um, but, um, yeah, keeping your cool is definitely cause we can,
obviously you gain nothing if you start working back at the customer.
You know, there's nothing that helps with that.
I mean, if you maintain your cool, it's amazing how much that will calm down
the customer too, when we do do something, you know, kind of dumb and fry
something that's obviously your fault.
But if you can maintain your cool about it, you know, is that our normal
reaction is to bark back.
But we as the professional have to maintain our cool to not bark as it works.
So yeah.
Fantastic stuff.
Gerald, I sure appreciate you hanging out with us today and a great insight on
keeping your cool.
Sure.