Meeting a plumber

The plumber story isn’t so much about the plumber himself, but rather about our meeting.

We had an appointment with the president of the company, made a couple days prior to our arrival. He gave us specific instructions as to which door to enter from the exterior, and to call him when we were on our way. We followed all these steps.  After entering the exterior door, we found ourself in the middle of two hallways, one straight ahead and one to our left, neither of which was very well decorated.  The building was musty and had paper signs taped to the doors.   A sign pointed us straight ahead and through a set of double doors that led to a very large and very dark warehouse. We thought, “this can’t be right”, and turned around to the other hallway.

Down the second hallway, different company names were listed on each, but not the plumber. We passed one open door with a man sitting behind a desk (no computer, just an empty desk). He appeared to have nothing to do except stare out his door at us as we wandered up and down the hallway.  I’m sure that we looked very much lost.  Since he was very attentive to our wanderings, we asked him for directions and he sent us back to the double doors leading to the “warehouse”.  We went back there, and entered cautiously as Simon called out, “Hello?”  It was rather dark to house an office.

Nonetheless, we did notice the plumbers sign made of metal that was attached to the side of the third door down the walkway in this warehouse.  Hmmm, not what we expected.  Both of us had talked with multiple receptionists on the phone while making our appointment. We expected a large company, a large office, and not a smaller warehouse space through the window of a locked door.  There was a doorbell, but no one answered the door.  Were we still at the wrong place?  We didn’t want to head any further into the darker corners of the warehouse.  Surely, there must be a larger welcoming office for customers and this was just an employee workroom?   Simon called the plumber on the phone to confirm our appointment and asked for someone to open the door, we learned that even the secretary wasn’t there. What? Oh, it was just an answering service, and she would leave a message. But we have an appointment, right?

So, not until we walked back again out the double doors trying to figure out where we should be, and then back through the double doors (a fourth time) into the ominous warehouse did we see the shadow of a large figure approaching. Hello? Yes, indeed, this was the plumber. He was just arriving back late from lunch. Our appointment continued for the next hour. A good 15 minutes was wasted on printing the info that Simon had e-mailed to him 2 days prior.  And much time was spent by Simon explaining how our earth sheltered home will be uniquely built.

Simon has so much patience to explain the building processes to so many contractors who have no experience with earth sheltered homes.  This is difficult because some contractors think they already know so much and feel the need to let us know.

This may or may not be the plumber that we choose to hire, we’ll see how the bidding process continues, but, it certainly was an interesting first meeting with him.

 

Thanks Sherri for adding to this blog…
The funniest part, from my perspective, was the phone call with the receptionist… When I called to ask her where the entrance to the office was, she just repeated the address back to me. I said, “no, we are already there, we just can’t find anything with “Suite 24″ on it. We were on the first floor in the ware house. Was there a second floor and how could we get to it?” She simply said, “I don’t know.”  What? How could she not know? So I asked her to come and let us in.   she said, “Sorry, I can’t do that”.  Eventually she admitted that she was just part of an answering service and she was not even in Michigan.  So I asked if she could forward me to [the president of the company]?”, but no, she couldn’t do that either.  So I said, “What can you do?”  She said she was only able to take a message.
Anyway, if you have a small company, my suggestion is to skip the silly receptionist service and get a cell phone with voice mail and texting instead  You are only fooling customers until they visit. Personally, I don’t mind working with a small company, as long as I can get ahold of the right people when I need them.