Best Of

I remember the first time I added a loop to a oil tank in 1974 or 1975. The old model J pump had a small plastic air cushion wafer in the pump to reduce the gear set hum from traveling back to the tank which acted as an amplifier. Of course, while doing oil burner tune ups, we would always remove the 8 bolt cover and either clean or replace the strainer. Once in a while, you would find one of those wafers in the clean-out Jiffy-Juice bucket when you were done. OOPS, oh well... too late now! and off the the next call. Most of the time there was no problem anyway.

But the office got a call from a customer about this strange noise coming from the tank. The records show that I just completed the tune up the week before. The service manager took me aside and explained "Tank HUM" and how to fix it with a coil of copper tubing. It stops the harmonic path of the vibration from the pump the the tank.

I was given the task of returning to fix my screw up the next day. When I arrived, I explained the problem to the customer and how it can just crop up after years of quiet operation. But that when I found out yesterday, I was going back to fix it. I thought about it all night and what could possibly cause this noise, and looked it up in my old trade school textbook. That is where the old timers found out about the coil of tubing would fix it.

I added a 2 loop coil at the tank with a flare union and Viola! The noise was gone. Two days later that customer called the office to thank me for the extra effort I made on his behalf. The boss keeps all those complement and complaint cards on all the employees.

Every time there is an employee review, those cards come out. Once I knew this, every time a customer would complement me on a job well done... I would tell them, "you really think so? You know, My Uncle Frank was having a particularly bad day when I left to shop this morning. If you would just call the girls that answer the phones in the office, and tell them what you just told me, that would make his day!" I had the record for complements from customers. My stack of complaint cards was about 1-1/2" tall while the complement stack was over 6" tall. Uncle Frank said I was the only service tech in the company that had more complements than complaints. Go Figure!!

We didn't have social media back in the day, but it never hurts to ask for a good review today, I like the "Boss is having a bad day" approach, it gives the customer a little more incentive!

Mr Ed.