A real 'kicker.'

Today I have a real 'kicker' of a story to share.

Today was a pretty typical winter day of being the Cable guy in Amishland. The skies were cloudy; precipitation was threatening all day. The people I met were all pretty cool. I tried to serve them the best I could. That was all true until my last stop of the day that required customer contact.

On paper it was a simple job. The gentleman already had one digital box and internet service. He was just adding a second box to a pre-existing cable line. I had called him ahead of time and told him I would be arriving in the next few minutes. He sounded cool enough on the phone so; so worries, right?

Wrong. I knew exactly what street he lived on in the town where I was working; just not exactly which house. After I identified it, I chuckled a little bit as I realized that it was 'THAT' house.

THAT house would be the house of a well-known local cross-dresser. I had heard many of the guys talk about seeing the guy in his high heels outside. I had heard guys that had been inside talk about how many shoes he had. Now I was going to find out for myself.

I rang the bell and he yelled for me to come in. I walked in and he smiled and greeted me. He seemed nice enough and fortunately he was dressed as a man. He confirmed what the paperwork told me, 'This should be simple.' He directed me into his daughter's bedroom and the line where I would be connecting the new digital box. I noticed immediately that there was a technical flaw in the type of cable. The box was not going to work. I was going to have to replace the line.

I began asking the gentleman questions about the route of the line through the basement. He took me downstairs into the family room. I noticed that the entire long wall of the family room was covered by stacked shoe boxes. There was an electric heating panel that stuck out from the wall a few inches. On top of that was one black woman's high heel shoe. Very interesting.

It was down in the basement we began to run into some 'trouble.' I continued to ask the questions I needed to in order to perform my job. He would answer a different question. He would go off on some tangent and get lost. At one point, in an effort to redirect his attention to the information I asked for I said, 'Sir, I don't need to know about that.'

He looked at me and said, 'Don't be a smart-ass with me.'

Ugh

There were twists-and-turns in my mind as I debated whether-or-not to REALLY be a SMART ASS and make some comment about the 'wall-full' of shoes in the adjacent room. He impressed me as exaggerating his own self-imortance. He had dropped names, mentioned he worked for the State Police, yada, yada, yada. I sensed early on he was someone I would not like.

He suggested I call his buddy 'Jimmy' that works for the Company. I knew who he was talking about and went out to my van to call him. I asked him...'How do you communicate with this guy?' JIM told me he usually just let the guy say all that he had to say and then try a different angle to get what you need. He reassured me that, finally, I would get there.

I went back in and took a different approach. I just did what I had to do quietly. I was as polite and respectful.

When I went to leave he apologized. I told him I was sorry, too, that we had miscommunicated. I told him I try to speak clearly-and-directly when performing my job. He responded by going on-and-on about his wealth of experience and said, 'all I was trying to say was, 'I don't know.''

I smiled and looked at him and said, 'and that's all you had to say.'

I guess I finally did 'get there' in the end...lol.

I just thought that was a real 'kicker' of a story for the day.


Hope you all had a good day.