What's the funniest thing that happened to you techs on a service call?

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DAKSY

Full Time RVer
Staff member
Dec 2, 2008
9,960
Wherever we're parked
I was dispatched to diagnose & repair a free-standing gas unit, I believe it was an older Regency that the customer couldn't get to work right. She was a nice looking woman, late 30s. Very pleasant, as well.
She said that the stove worked fine & then yesterday she noticed that the pilot was out... her husband was away on travel & "just fix it & tell me how much..." So I spread out my drop cloth & grabbed my tool bag. I opened the front door & it looked like somebody had just thrown the logs in the firebox. A couple were laying right over the pilot hood, so I figured that's why it was out. I pulled everything out, spiffed the firebox, cleaned the glass, lit the pilot, checked the gas pressure & read the thermopile, but I didn't have a manual to reset the logs. I asked the customer if she had one & she said the unit was on location when they moved in the year before & didn't know anything about it. OK, I'll look around, maybe it's under the back of the stove & I walk around it. "Oh, look!" I say, "There's some paperwork under here. Maybe that's it."
So, I pull out 5-6 pages of not-to-neatly folded paper & open it up & it's HARDCORE PORN! A man & a woman engaged in various positions of explicit you know what, that had been downloaded off the internet... I immediately folded them up & said, "Nope. Not what I need" & tried to discretely put them back under the unit. She asks me what they were & I hesitated, not knowing what to say & she stuck her hand out. What could I do but hand them to her? She opened them up, looked at them & turned about 6 shades of red. She looked at the date, which just happened to be the day before, EXACTLY when the stove stopped working. She says, "My Son! He did this! When he gets home from school..." Evidently, he figured he'd stash them under the stove, for whatever reason & when he, did he must've shifted the whole unit & caused the logs to fall on the pilot. Anyway, I used a little tech savvy to reset the logs in what I thought was the correct pattern & cleaned up. She was so embarrassed by those pix, that she couldn't even look me in the eye when she paid me for the service...I laughed all the way to my next call...
 
Once, a woman opened the door to let me and my partner in for the work day #2 ( I had told her what time I would arrive). She was holding a bath towel in front of her saying, I just got out of the shower. What would posess a woman to answer the door in such a state and not take the 3 more seconds it takes to put a robe on??

By far, the worst one was a younger college aged girl came out of the shower wearing only a towel...around her head!! You know, while their hair is wet, the towel is worn much like a turban? Not a stitch on beside that! Looks right at my partner and says, Don't mind me, I'm the horny one! And continues walking right past as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

Two different times that I can think of right off the bat, I was sent away because the people were still in bed. All these times were pre-arranged and approved by the customer, so it was not like any of them were surprises.

(Moderators-please delete this post if it is too crude or offensive)
 
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Once, a woman opened the door to let me and my partner in for the work day #2 ( I had told her what time I would arrive). She was holding a bath towel in front of her saying, I just got out of the shower. What would posess a woman to answer the door in such a state and not take the 3 more seconds it takes to put a robe on??

By far, the worst one was a younger college aged girl came out of the shower wearing only a towel...around her head!! You know, while their hair is wet, the towel is worn much like a turban? Not a stitch on beside that! Looks right at my partner and says, Don't mind me, I'm the horny one! And continues walking right past as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

Two different times that I can think of right off the bat, I was sent away because the people were still in bed. All these times were pre-arranged and approved by the customer, so it was not like any of them were surprises.

(Moderators-please delete this post if it is too crude or offensive)
Shoulda taken both those girls up on their offer.
 
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Aaahhh, house calls, too funny! Nearly pissed myself laughing!
 
Wasn't a service call, but when I was 18, I took a job with my uncle, who was a fire repair contractor. My cousin and I were gutting out a house that had suffered a very bad fire. We were throwing out a couch that folded out into a bed, into the front yard, into the front yard. When it landed, a whole bunch of polaroids fell out. We picked up a shoebox full of the pics. All of them were of a woman with 1, 2 or 3 guys. She was apparently very friendly, as they were all naked. :) That afternoon, we were sitting in the front yard, waiting for my uncle to pick us up, when a car pulled up - the woman in the pics, with her husband. They were the owners, and she saw us looking at the pics - she started yelling at her husband, who got out of the car, walked up to us, held his hand out, we gave him the pics. He never said anything. The next day, my uncle assigned us to another job, he didn't say why.:)
 
Another one. Install. Running Trac-Pipe thru a drop ceiling in the basement to get to a screened in porch. Had to move a futon in the family room so I could get at the panels above & I hear a "SPLASH!" WTF? Then I smell it. Bong Water. The teenage son had stashed his apparatus behind the futon so his parents wouldn't find it. It was 18 maybe 24" tall...LOTS of Bong Water...He was upstairs in the kitchen & I tapped him on the shoulder when his dad wasn't looking & I mouthed a "come with me" & went downstairs. I told him what happened & that the bong was OK, because it fell on the carpeting, but he'd better do something clean the now soaked & stinky wall-to-wall before dad came down...He grabbed a BUNCH of towels from the dirty laundry & started sopping it up, & before he could light any candles or spray air freshener, sure enough, Dad came down to see how I was progressing with the gas line...Of course he smelled that funky pungent odor & knew EXACTLY what it was...Fireworks ensued - (Expletives deleted)..."Dad!" "It's not mine! I'm just watching it for a friend!" (Yeah, right)...When we left a couple of hours later, that poor kid was STILL down there with towels. Probably got grounded for a year or two...
 
I have found a number of "stashed" objects throughout the years also. Among them were drugs, pictorals (?), "marital aids" (whether or not they were married or single). Even had to move the remains of a few dearly departed that were kept at the house (ash form). Now you don't run into that very often!
 
Ok, I'll jump in... back when I had my catering business in bucks co, pa we were catering a lesbian couple's new home party around new hope, pa, we delivered all the food, got everything set up, and most of the lovely ladies were dancing, half lit up on booze lights down low, you get the picture. Anyway, the one homeowner chick asked if I knew how to mix drinks, I replied "sure I do" and then she asked if I could stay, and man the bar for a few hours, paid of course. Trust me, I thought hard about this, but, in the end, I kindly refused. I suppose I was just too professional back then.

And now to the present time in my life, I'm surrounded by wood:mad: (the kind with bark, that is) ;)
 
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A neighbor of mine bought a old farmhouse, with a old dairy barn. It had been in the same family for over 100 years. The owners were in their 70's, a retired farm couple. They were moving to Florida as soon as the place sold. After he bought the place, my neighbor found a locked room in the barn. Afer he opened it up, he found a pretty elaborate B&D setup, and a lot of B&D porn. The room was very neat and clean. I guess you never know what your neighbor's are doing.....:)
 
Once, a woman opened the door to let me and my partner in for the work day #2 ( I had told her what time I would arrive). She was holding a bath towel in front of her saying, I just got out of the shower. What would posess a woman to answer the door in such a state and not take the 3 more seconds it takes to put a robe on??

By far, the worst one was a younger college aged girl came out of the shower wearing only a towel...around her head!! You know, while their hair is wet, the towel is worn much like a turban? Not a stitch on beside that! Looks right at my partner and says, Don't mind me, I'm the horny one! And continues walking right past as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

Many of us would see these as good things.
 
Had a customer who bought a brand new Volvo call the next morning screaming that "This piece of sh*t won't start, and I'm late for work, you better get somebody here NOW !!".....boy was he hot. Sent a tech to his house, car fired right up....the guys Wife stick her head out the window and yells to the husband "What was wrong?"....husbands responds, "I forgot to put it in Park".....Wife yells back "Arsehole!":rolleyes:
 
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Had a customer who bought a brand new Volvo call the next morning screaming that "This piece of sh*t won't start, and I'm late for work, you better get somebody here NOW !!".....boy was he hot. Sent a tech to his house, car fired right up....the guys Wife stick her head out the window and yells to the husband "What was wrong?"....husbands responds, "I forgot to put it in Park".....Wife yells back "Arsehole!":rolleyes:
I was on a driving trip to a conference when I was in grad school with a Brit grad student that had never driven an automatic. He couldn't get the thing in gear. I had the shifter apart with my Leatherman before I realized that he wasn't stepping on the brake.
 
Many of us would see these as good things.

I am starting to regret not being in a business that provided in home service all those years.
 
I am starting to regret not being in a business that provided in home service all those years.
In your signature "The good ole days weren't". Well maybe would of been if you were in the home service business. ;)
 
Funny in a yucky sort of way............

I sold real estate for years; had a customer meet me at a foreclosed property; had been told the property was cockroach infested. (Yuck!)

I told the buyer this information as I unlocked the front door. He said he didn't mind as the price on the house was a fit for him. He & I walked in together through the livingroom and then kitchen.....

When I saw the sink filled with live cockroaches and then noticed one full corner of the living room was alive with cochroaches I said "I'll wait here........." as he went further into the house. After a bit, being creeped out by the wall & sink 'moving' I stepped outside to the sidewalk.

In a very few minutes the potential buyer came flying out the front door making unmentionable comments while he tore off his knit hat, winter coat and shirt which he tossed down on the snow covered ground. He hopped around the front yard first one leg and then the other hollering, shaking himself, twisting himself in gyrations I've not seen since the limbo dance was popular. :)

After things calmed down a bit I asked, "So, did you find more bugs?" His reply was that when he visited the basement his knit hat apparently touched the basement rafters and what appeared to be a whole colony of cockroaches fell down on him, down his neck, inside his shirt, etc. - and then he fled the building.

Believe it or not, he bought the house. Orkin (a pest eliminator company in our area) made a lot of money on that house - so did the drywall company that came and ripped out all the interior walls to get to the cockroach nests.

On a side note - our relatives commented a time or two as to why I carried a can of roach killer in my car (in my coffee cup holder needless to say). I told them it was for my floor mat. Need I explain further to you?
 
Sorry, Adios. Truly I am. Really...... I am. :)

I guess I forgot to mention the potential buyer was built like Reggie White (defensive end) for the Green Bay Packers. I never knew a guy that big could move like that buyer did. :)
 
Great story Shari but it is creepy, is Wisconsin overrun with these critters?:cool:
 
Great story Shari but it is creepy, is Wisconsin overrun with these critters?:cool:


Heavens no - we are not over run but there are certain times I'd run into the critters.
 
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