Customer Expects Propane Tank Technician To Cut Down A Fallen Tree, But He’s Quick To Explain That’s Not His Job
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Some people are just out to blag as much free stuff as possible. Take the folk who find the tiniest thing wrong with their meal and try to demand it for free, or people who make insipid complaints to try to get a free gift or a voucher out of the company as a goodwill gesture.
Honestly, sometimes it feels like picky and often unpleasant people like this get all the perks and free stuff, while folk who uncomplainingly go about their day not letting tiny inconveniences get them down have to pay for everything. But it’s worth remembering that, at the heart of it, the latter group are the people who are actually making the most of their lives.
So when the propane service technician in this story received an emergency call out of hours from a customer about her propane tanks, he was ready to drop everything to go and help her, despite the terrible weather outside. But once he’d heard about the problem she was having, he decided not to go at all.
Read on to find out why.
Propane worker is not an arborist
One recent winter, there was a bad snowstorm that went through the region.
And where my dad worked for a propane company as a service technician, you’d be on standby for emergency calls every few weeks in case there’s an issue that happened.
One weekend he got an emergency call from a woman who I think was like an hour and a half to a two hour drive away.
She said due to the recent snowstorm, a tree fell in her backyard, and struck the propane tanks next to her house.
But what the woman wanted this guy’s dad to do was outside of his usual remit.
She said that tanks looked damaged, and she added that there was another tree in her yard that looked like it was getting ready to fall over.
So, she wanted my dad to come with a chainsaw to cut down the other tree in her yard. And it wasn’t a small tree either. It was fully grown.
My dad made a very clear that he is not cutting down the other tree in her yard. He told her that if she wanted a tree cut down, she would have to call an arborist to do that.
He told me that she replied in a very snobby tone “Well don’t you wanna make sure your tanks are protected?”
So of course, the dad laid down the law.
My dad told her, that when the tanks are on her property, they are her responsibility to make sure they are safe and protected. That she is technically responsible for them because she rents them.
This was something that was clearly outlined in the agreement she signed when she signed up for the company’s propane service.
He laid out the legality of the issue. That himself and his company are not certified arborists, they are not legally allowed to do that kind of work, and don’t have any of the proper equipment. That if something were to go wrong, he and the company could face major fines.
And since the weather was still bad, he told her to send photos of the tanks since he wouldn’t be able to make it out there.
Let’s see what happened when the images arrived.
She eventually did, still complaining about how my dad wouldn’t cut down the tree in her yard, lousy service, etc.
When he examined the photos, the tanks were barely touched. The only damage was the paint getting a little scratched up.
So he told her her tanks are fine, and to start looking for arborists if she’s worried about her tree.
And that was it. My dad laughed about it afterwards. Not too sure if the woman switched or is still with the company.
Honestly, some people are really only interested in taking advantage.
Perhaps this woman thought she’d get some free tree work if there was a problem with her tanks, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
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Because the reality was that the tanks were her problem, not the company’s while they were on her property.
Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.
This person pointed out how entitled this woman was.
And others caught on to her way of thinking she could manipulate the tree work out of the company.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an IT employee who thought a ticket was closed, only to hear otherwise from the client’s manager.
Meanwhile, this Redditor wondered just how far the woman’s entitlement would go.
Sure, on the surface she is making it about protecting the propane tanks. But the reality is that they were in very little threat from the trees at all, and even if they were beside potentially moving the tanks there wasn’t much that the company was going to do. Because legally, as soon as the propane tanks were on her property, they were her duty to take care of and protect – so if she thought that trees were going to damage them, it was her job to deal with the trees.
But of course, she probably knew that. She was probably just doing her best to see if she could get the tree work done for free on a technicality. And plenty of folk are like that, doing their best to swindle things out of others in order to avoid the hassle of having to do the jobs themselves or the expense of having to pay. And even though it didn’t work this time, you bet this tactic has worked on folk in the past.
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