June 12, 2013

The Value of Listening...and some really cool plumbing tips


I'm always stressing to my students and students in the program how important the simple skill of listening is.  We talk about a lot of business, utilize (and praise) the support of ASMP and try to cast our students out with a solid understanding of the business tools needed to find and retain a client.

I recently had an experience that taught the lesson better then anything that could be or has ever been said in a classroom.  To understand fully you need to know that my wife and I have a rather small house in the western suburbs of Chicago, if you have been out you know what I mean.  Alongside Kate and I, are our two boys, 10 and 12 so the real estate of the single bathroom is at a premium.  My poor wife, surrounded by her three boys (even the 2 cats and hamster are boys) the shower is often her only escape.

For about a year now the pressure has been on a steady decline until recently when it barely had the pressure for the faucet to convert itself from tub filler, to a shower.  So like anybody who doesn't want to attempt a re-pipe or other fix I started calling around to get an idea of what a fix would involve.  And don't get me wrong, I do a lot around the house but the thought of water spewing in from all angles is enough of a visual for me to call a professional.

Call number one: a ten-minute inspection and a three thousand dollar estimate (of course they won't know for sure until they 'get inside.'  Get inside what?  The pipes??? Are you really going to get inside, I thought you already said they all need to go???

Call number two yielded a similar 10-minute once over, although this one did at least turn the water on to check the pressure.  This was $950.00 for a partial re-pipe after taping on the pipe like a damn Pipe Whisperer to determine that the original 90+ year old pipes are full of 'gunk.'  I gotta say, I'm no plumber but the pipe whisperer bit (and the look on his face while he waited for the pipe to air it's secrets) was both too odd and too much for me.

While at a little league game, (our city and our oldest) are big into baseball, another parent told me her cousin-in-law is a plumber who lives a block or two over.  A couple messages back and forth and I was answering a very thorough battery of questions, the conversation ended with me texting him a couple detailed images of fittings, faucets and other plumbing 'stuff'. He explained I may need new inserts on the faucet, with the pictures he would be able to bring the right one.

I really like where this is heading already...

June 11, 2013

NEOCON 2013






If you are attending Neocon, stop by the Harrington booth on the seventh floor and write on our walls!