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Heard a customer say 'it's just a loose wire' after I fixed their dryer
They were telling their neighbor how easy my job must be. Made me think about all the times I've traced a 'simple' wire through a whole machine. Anyone else get that? How do you explain the work without sounding like you're complaining?
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anderson.jason1mo ago
Honestly though, sometimes the customer has a point. If it really was just a loose wire, then the fix was simple. We can make our jobs sound harder than they are. A lot of trades work is about knowing where to look, and once you find it, the actual fix can be quick. It's okay to admit that not every job is a huge puzzle. Getting paid to know which wire to check is still a skill, even if re-tightening it takes two seconds.
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uma_harris1mo ago
But that misses the whole point of paying for experience. You're not paying for the two seconds of tightening, you're paying for the twenty years of knowing it's that specific wire and not the whole unit. A customer calling that simple is like saying surgery is simple because the stitch only took a minute, ignoring the decade of medical school to know where and how to cut. It devalues the skill that prevents the problem from happening again.
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park.riley1mo ago
Ever had someone watch you turn one screw and think they just saw the whole show? Like, sure, the last step is simple, but the real work was knowing which screw out of a hundred to turn in the first place.
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