This past weekend we had our 2-year-old baptism and birthday family extravaganza, with parents and in-laws coming in from all over the place. So of course, at 6:30 on Friday night, the air conditioner died.
Several people on both sides of our family have an intense dislike for over-heating--including the most important person, my wife. So after a brief discussion we decided that it would be worth it to pay someone overtime to come out.
Since our heat pump recreationally stops working every couple of months, we've had several different companies work on it. So we called the most recent people who serviced it, Artisan Heating and Cooling.
It was 9:00 by that point. And raining lightly. David, the guy on call, was in Knightdale, about half an hour away. He asked if he could come right away. The thought of a fully air-conditioned weekend gave both my wife and my dad great delight. So we told David, come on!
He called back twenty minutes later. He had stopped through Cary to pick up Justin, the lead tech. It wouldn't cost us any more, he said, and he wanted to make sure if we were paying the money for them to make the visit that we got it fixed.
When Justin and David arrived, my dad and I went out with them in the drizzle. They made the requisite jokes about having seen HV/AC units like this one in a museum. And then they proceeded to not only fix the problem but fix several other things that were developing problems.
They delighted in ragging on one another. And they took even greater joy in doing their work extremely thoroughly and well. Even on a Friday night, even in the rain, even at 10:30 at night.
"Tie your boots impeccably" was written on a Post-It note on my dad's desk growing up. It was a reminder to do even the small things in life with an eye towards excellence.
I have a growing love and appreciation for people in any industry or work who do that work well--especially excellence done in the face of inconvenience or personal cost. It inspires me on a Monday morning to do my own work with a joyful diligence.
There's so much about my work that I can't control. But I can tie my boots impeccably. Not a frantic grasping at every detail. We're talking about simple good work in the things that I know that I must do: prayer, study, being fully present to the people around me, laboring over talk preparations and Bible study preps and emails and organizational tasks.
I'm grateful for a couple guys who tied their HV/AC boots impeccably on a rainy Friday night in order to save the family celebration weekend--even if they did hate on my heat pump.
No comments:
Post a Comment