I thought I had all my work done, and I was cleaning up to go home.
Everyone thinks that being the owner of an HVAC company means you sit in a cozy office all day and tell all the HVAC technicians what to do. Maybe some HVAC company owners do this, but I don’t. I work right along with my guys, and I put in more hours than they do. I go out on service calls the same as they do, and I am at the office before they get there, and still there when everyone goes home. I have some people who come in when there are emergencies, and I take some of the emergency service calls myself. Last week, I thought I was going to get out of the office early. All the service calls for the day were completed, and we had no emergency calls come in through the day. I was turning off the lights and getting ready to leave when the phone rang. I had a frantic woman on the phone telling me the furnace was broken, and she had a newborn in the house. I called my wife and told her I had to take the service call. I couldn’t let her go without a furnace, even if it was for ten minutes. I grabbed my HVAC ID badge and went to the house. It took two hours to repair the furnace, and the woman was so happy that she was crying. When I got home, I told my wife about the woman’s reaction. She smiled and asked if I wanted her to file the bill. She already knew I hadn’t charged the woman for the service call.