Supervisor Demands Service Technician Complete A Job On An Icy Hill, Leading To A Day-Long Ordeal And A Lesson Learned

Heather Hall

2 months ago

Sometimes, following orders can lead to unexpected consequences, especially when the weather is less than ideal.

What would you do if your supervisor insisted that you complete a job even though you may face slippery road conditions?

This service tech finds himself in this exact situation.

Here’s what happened.

Driving down an Icy Hill:

I was a service tech who did scheduled calls to customers’ homes. We generally had anywhere from 8-12 jobs a day as we were swamped.

As one of the lead techs, I was also assigned jobs that most of the other techs had no training to fix.

On this particular day, it began snowing/icing, and the road conditions began worsening.

No issue normally, as long as I could just avoid a few streets in town that have steep hills.

I have a job in a newer area, and when I get to the neighborhood, I notice the house is at the bottom of a pretty steep hill on a dead-end street.

I park at the top, message my supervisor, and tell him I would recommend we reschedule the job as my truck would never make it back up the hill.

If the supervisor says do it, you just do it.

He must have been having a bad day because he goes off on me and demands that I just do the job. The road conditions were not that bad.

I took a photo of the hill and sent it, but he still demanded I do the job.

I would also note that my truck is vital to the work and I could not have walked to the home due to the equipment in the truck that is required.

I saved the message and sent it to my personal account. Getting to the customer’s home was no issue, and I had them up and running in under 30 minutes.

I followed my supervisor’s demands and did the job.

While he was inside, the weather got worse outside.

Leaving was another issue. I could not get to the top of the hill with the truck. I quickly gave up once I determined it was hopeless.

Me: “I am stuck at the bottom of a hill and unable to get my truck up it. My other scheduled jobs will have to be reassigned, and a tow truck called to get me out”.

Supervisor: “Try harder. It’s not hard to drive in icy conditions”.

Me: “At this point, I feel it unsafe to do so from this point on as I feel I could damage the homeowner’s property. See prior messages about the hill being too steep and my request to reschedule being denied”.

Here’s where his waiting game begins.

At this point, the supervisor calls me, and I confirm I will not attempt to further climb the hill.

He grumbles but knows me enough not to push me, so he tells me to hang on.

I waited 45 minutes, and he showed up in his work truck (much smaller and lighter than mine).

He does not even attempt to go down the hill but walks.

He tries for a while to get my truck up himself but then accidentally hits a mailbox.

He gives up and calls a tow truck.

With wintery conditions, I wait another 3 hours for a truck to arrive. When they do arrive, they also get stuck at the bottom of the hill (I’m not sure why they even tried going down it).

Now me and a tow truck are stuck at the bottom of the hill, and this time, the wait is even longer.

Thanks to his supervisor, he had an easy work day.

They needed to bring in a specialty truck which turns out does not have a long enough chain to reach us at the bottom of the hill.

We waited even longer for a third tow truck to arrive.

Overall, I arrived at the customer’s home around 9:30 am and finished at about 10:00 am. I do not get up the hill until 7:00 pm.

For 9 hours, I was at the bottom of the hill with my truck running while I played online on my laptop. Instead of working in the wintery conditions outside, I was toasty in the cab.

Even though it probably wasn’t fun waiting for hours, at least he stayed warm and entertained.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this story.

The story makes this person think of their childhood neighborhood.