We Should’ve Left the Lights on for You

It’s late in the day and your dispatcher is trying to reach you while your arms are buried in a unit. You can feel she is under pressure to get calls taken care of. So you begin to rush on the job. You wrap up, write the invoice up and light up – right on out of there to the next call. Thirty minutes later Suzie calls you on the radio and tells you there is still a problem on the call that you just left. It registers immediately. Now your options are to be embarrassed a little bit or to be embarrassed a lot. But you really don’t have a choice. If they swing Big Mouth Bob by you’ll never hear the end of it. If you get the chance to go back it won’t be so bad.

If you are a professional technician who cares about his work, you need only be good and embarrassed once to learn from this lesson. There’s no way you’ll leave a job site again before you check to make sure you left the power on.

Always make sure to turn the power back on and make sure the equipment is either running or can run, before you leave.

Not sure if I would do it, but I have had technicians tell me that they leave their truck keys by the breaker, thermostat or switch, so it will help them to remember to energize the system. Maybe there is another type of physical reminder that you can invent to help you in this.

Photo by blmurch on Flickr