The Professionals

I had to have my furnace serviced yesterday morning. The problem turned out to be water (condensation) had migrated into the oil filter and froze overnight, causing the furnace to starve for fuel. I paid attention to everything the service guy did and I asked a lot of questions. The parts came to $8.50. The labor was $105.

About a year ago I had a slow leak in my hot tub. The problem turned out to be a cracked rubber o-ring in the pump's bleeder hole. I paid attention to everything the service guy did and I asked a lot of questions. The parts came to $0.25 and the labor was $75.

Now, I'm no dummy when it comes to mechanical stuff. I spent years running newspaper presses, could tear them apart and rebuild them from scratch and gave seminars on maintenance and trouble shooting. Prior to that I was the plant maintenance guy for a metal fabrication plant and was in charge of installing the electrical and compressed air to the new equipment. So, I'm not shy around mechanical maintenance issues.

I do, however, use discretion in not tearing something apart that I've never worked on before. So, I'll call the hot tub guy or the furnace guy once and pick their brains. I stand around like a typical home owner, my hands in my pockets, asking naive questions, and offering lame suggestions.

But these guys are slick, too. They know that they make their money on the labor end of the call. The parts rarely amount to anything. So they usually have a flurry of non-related activity and spend about ten minutes in their parts bin searching for the "right one". Because that's another trick they use -- your parts are always "hard to find".

So, I hang around, looking like a doofus, watching how things go together. Knowing that most of what they are doing is a dog and pony show. I've done the same thing myself to sell a boss on a new piece of equipment or to hire an extra guy.

This summer I had to replace that o-ring in the hot tub, again. It cost me $0.25 and less than a half an hour of my time. I also discovered that if you over-tighten the plug it cracks the o-ring and that the heat from the pump eventually dries out the rubber, making the crack worse, and the leak returns in about six months. Something I'm sure the hot tub guy knew when he over-tightened it the last time.

I guess I've said all of that to make this observation on life:

An expert will make the difficult look simple.
A professional will make the simple look difficult.

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