So busy!

The chrome pieces finally came in for the Camry.  The fellow had tried to just forget them, hoping I wouldn't notice that he left that part out.  Well he got the wrong guy, because I never even got close to the car when he gave it back to me, before noticing that it wasn't fixed.

Perhaps he can get away with that most of the time, but not here and not today.  I stopped by last week and made an appointment for Monday morning at 10 AM.  When I arrived at that time this morning, he had to ask me my name again and what I wanted.  Customer service, no one cares about anyone else any more.

He drives a yellow Corvette, and has a 40 foot motorhome pulling a Cadillac SUV for his weekend endeavors, so perhaps he doesn't need to be customer oriented any more.  So much for that guy, but I have my new chrome installed now, as I waited for it rather than leave.

Once that was done, I headed over to the local tire shop in the old downtown of Olathe.  It is about 10 blocks away from the storage place where the utility trailer is parked.  This is a really old place!  But I have had them ordering tires since we moved here.  I did use Wal Mart for a couple this spring when I was getting an oil change, but otherwise these folks have been my shop.

The truck had acquired a nice roofing nail right in the middle of the back tread.  We noticed that up at the Truman museum on Saturday.  Darn, I thought I had picked up all those nails that came from the rain spout.  But it was a used nail that came out of the old shingles, not one of the new style, so it must have come from the grass.

And on Sunday as I was mowing the yard with the push mower, I stepped on another of those pesky old nails and it went right thru the sole of my shoe and into my foot!!!! Owwwwie!!

But then we got into a story telling time when we saw a spot about D day on the TV over in the corner. I began to tell about being a Sea Bee electrician and how they wanted me to climb telephone poles to hang wire  in the Viet Nam combat zone.  I asked at the time if I had STUPID printed on my shirt?  And that brought a laugh out of the folks in the waiting room.  I told another about a guy that was shot in the backside while he was in the plywood out building.  It was only a flesh wound, but he had to go running to the corps man yelling medic, medic.  He was holding his pants from falling down with his left hand.  All I could think at the time was thank god it wasn't me.

When my truck had the plug finished in the back tire, I handed the man the credit card to pay, and he handed it back to me.  He informed me that I was a regular customer and today it was on the house.........   What?   Was it because I was telling Viet Nam stories on D day?  I didn't have that intention, it was just some old memories.   I thanked him and was marveled for the rest of the afternoon.

Then late in the day, the Heating and Cooling guy came to replace the board in the AC unit.  This is the defrost board that senses that the unit is frosted over in the winter time when you use it as a heat pump. It was $330, and then we purchased a annual service contract for another $179 to have them come back and perform preventative maintenance this fall and next spring.  He did give me 49 bucks off of the total bill since I was now a PM customer and got a discount on parts.   Still it was almost 500 bucks and we already paid $150 the first time to get 2 pounds of freon installed.  And get this, the service guy took the 2 pounds back out saying that I didn't need it in the first place.  No credit on that one though,  maybe I should have told some old Viet Nam stories to him toooooooo.

Retired Rod