Through Another's Eyes

The Ride Along….

Its Wednesday morning, and I am heading out my front door to meet with a technician from Total Mechanical Service a company out of the Greater St. Louis area. Brian operates remote in the Southwest Missouri area, and starts every day from his house south of Springfield. I start every day in Bentonville Arkansas, so I need to travel to get there to start. Brian likes to make sure he is at his first call by 7:30 or 8 in the morning and wants to kick it off around 6:30 am. A quick trip to google maps will  tell you Bentonville to Springfield is a little over two hours, so here I go in my old truck at just after 4am.

Oddly enough the most convenient and ironic place for me to meet him is his local Walmart, so I roll in right around 6:30 full of coffee and jump into his van. Now my goal for the day is to see what Brian sees, to move from job to job often with little information and attempt to save the day for each and every customer. The way I operate these days I am trying to solve large problems to help hundreds if not thousands of people out, but not Brian, its one site one customer at a time. The view from my desk is different than the view from his van, and if I lose sight of that then I lose a key piece of being an effective partner in the FM world.

First job, Springfield supercenter, FriJado STG7 rotisserie will occasionally drop temp and stop cooking. That’s it all the information he has, other than some notes from a previous ticket where a control board was swapped out. Walking inside tool bag in tow, Brian is recognized by the staff which I think is awesome. That shows a character that is rare these days, those associates know him and what he does. They are happy to see him and walk him right to the problem. After an impressive bit of troubleshooting just about every wire in the cabinet, that is way past my skill set, we he determines that the intermittent problem is with a worn-out wall outlet and that it is causing enough stray voltage to wear out electronics and trip safeties. Diagnosis is that an electrician will need to assist with the 480 volt outlet and once that is corrected should stop the ghost shutdowns.

Second job, second Supercenter in Springfield, Belshaw TG-50 Thermoglazer AC drive problems. We get inside, and Brian receives the same greeting. “Its you, are you here to fix my glazer,” the associate exclaims. “We are gonna figure out what is going on with it and do what it takes,” he says. Once again right into the service panel he finds a dead short that trips the internal breaker set. Working through the on switch, the door safety switch, and then the AC drive itself he determines that the drive is got an internal short. Pulling wires, he sees it spike on his meter. Lucky for the store the inhouse tech had ordered the AC drive and it was in a box at the machine. Brian ever so patiently powers down the machine and replaces all the tiny wires one at a time so that he doesn’t miss any, and then sets the driver settings the same as the old one. putting it back together he took care of some other small things that show a care for doing a great job and not just hanging a part. The small power switch was well worn, and the impeller gears, while well cared for by the associates, needed replacing. Putting it all back together the machine starts up and runs like a champ. Now that the shorts are gone, the door will open and turn off the motor safety instead of tripping a breaker. We pack it up and head out the door, one associate asks if we fixed it. I say, “he fixed the donut machine, I leaned on a table.” “Great I can get my glazed donuts again,” she exclaims. Brian with a smile walks out the door to finish up paperwork.

Now for the third job…Bentonville Arkansas. Yep we are driving back to where I work, Brian offers to swing by and get my truck (30 miles out of the way), but I stick to the ride along. Quitters never win, so West on I-44 we head. As we are approaching Joplin, his dispatch calls him with an emergency call in Siloam Springs, AR. He accepts it, and an hour later we drive through Bentonville on our way to Siloam Springs. We walk in to the store with the information that dispatch had on a Giles EOF-24 fryer that was not pumping oil very fast and that it was leaking on the floor. “Do you think it’s a pump,” I ask. “No telling he said, could be, but let’s look first before we start with parts.” Well the fryer pan was damaged, and there were wipe-all towels on the floor to contain mass amounts of grease. The top side was clean enough to not panic about food quality, but the filter pan was a hot mess, pardon the pun. Grease was all over the floor and despite the non-slip footwear pulling out the fryer was an adventure in lever mechanics. After a thorough scrubbing of the filter pan assembly we had the flow returned to normal, but it was only a temporary fix as the assembly was on its last melted wheel. While I continued to work on the pans in the sink, Brian checked the pump and found it was loose on its mount as well. At the end of this call we had the fryer operating, and the manager was placing an order for a new assembly with tools to replacing the aging and damaged one.

Now we are heading back to the third fourth job in Bentonville, AR. And arrive about 45 minutes later. This time we are looking at a significant water leak on the floor coming from the Rational Combi stack. Considering he stopped earlier at a hardware store for copper he already knew what had to be done and went right to work. Explaining to me that it was common to see this as the corrosive chemicals that are used to clean the units will eat away at the copper tubing especially in the first bend. There are signs of it on the concrete as well. This is something I don’t see from my desk, he sees it, I don’t. Now I have information to work with, firsthand knowledge and experience. Less than 30 minutes later he has chopped off cleaned and connected a new elbow and connecting gasket in order to allow the machine to expel water to the drain and not on the floor and we are once again loading into the truck. This fix was simple from my eyes, but only because he had seen it many times before. He already knew what to expect and it was an easy task, other than being two hours from his front door. Oh yeah, I forgot my truck is two hours away from here, and it's 7pm. Well, I wanted the full experience and I got it.

Two hours back to my truck in the dark, we talked about what I experienced. We talked about how we each think and respond to issues. It was a compelling look at Brian the tech and how he navigates this complicated service world and realistically why he has been successful at it for the 10 plus years he has been doing it.

So, if you have stuck with the long story to this point allow me a few more sentences to sum up what I want to recap from this day. These are the thoughts that were racing through my head as I pulled in my dark quiet driveway just after 11pm.

·        If you are in any industry, and you are not partnering, you are not succeeding. Reach out, find out how it looks to them. Sometimes solving a problem for your business partner may solve two for you.

·        Let your customers, and business partners tell you what is wrong with your program. Many times, that conversation will result in you realizing simple flaws that you were blind to. Brian showed me many things on this trip that would work better if slight changes were made. Not earth shattering, but little tiny changes to avoid the death by a thousand cuts syndrome.

·        Search out partners that share information. Brian and Brian’s company have always shared information, they have always answered my craziest questions. That is what comes from partnership. They are honest enough to tell me something won’t work and why, it allows me to draw on literally hundreds of years of experience within my own small network. Therefore, they continue to get my business. Total Mechanical is after my business, not my money. Find partners like this, because the cost will work itself out and even be less at the end of the day, believe me on that. 

·        Lastly, understand that a service tech is often a lone wolf moving from job to job trying to work miracles. Finding the connection with the folks in the field and making sure they know you hear them. This will gain you more traction than anything else, and will gain more insight than any other analytics. Through our conversations, I know better what Brian is trying to build as a legacy for him and his company, and in turn he now has that from me. That understanding builds real relationships that solves real problems. Anyone can bolt a part on for a quick fix, real techs solve the problem for the long term. This is why they are an FM’s first and best line of defense for any trade.