Patience

Patience is key. When I started working for a service company I learned how to work carefully. The biggest part was being able to listen to clients and let them convince me they know what they’re talking about. Those are the most difficult clients because these people make it difficult, but I have to get the work done either way. I have 2 incidents where it took a high amount of patience.

One of the first jobs I ever had doing service calls was an 8-hour job. The first three hours were the worst of my life. When I first arrived on this service call the client was already outside and ready. They were wearing gloves and seemed ready to work. the first step of the job is to check the pressure tank and the OHMES of the eletrical wiring. to make sure the voltage is traveling to the pressure tank, it was. after this you go to the well casing. I check the lines going down to the pump. The OHMES were not recieiving. What this means is that there is power but its only going to the pump and its not coming back meaning the pump has failed. after this I prepare to pull the pump, This interaction was when I knew this client was gonna be rough they started telling me what was wrong and telling me what to fix, (even after all this troublshooting). Throughout the process of this I need myself and the customer to be patient we need to analyze and make sure we know, we call this troubleshooting. troubleshooting is when you figure out the exact issue and make sure everything in that specific system works for example a well has 2 components the well pump and the pressure tank so when this customer told me to change the tank because the water wouldn’t work, but our policy is to troubleshoot to make sure its the true problem so when this customer was getting mad when I was running test. I was very frustrated at this time but I had to stay patient with them. Later on we discovered that he needed both a pump and a tank. so we pulled the pump and removed the tank.

At about hours 3 to 4, the customer was coming over and watching which we have no problem but he was telling me how to do stuff, for example, I was tightening a fitting and then he goes off that’s good you can stop. Or when he was telling me I’m doing the wiring wrong. The patience I need is unbelievable, but to top it off when the customer told me when are you done, it shouldn’t take that long, this was the worse spot to make me impatient this truly tested my ability to stay calm and patient. (I thought here was he questioning my abilities).In the end, the customer was calm and so was I, I kept myself calm and collected.

The moral of this story is no matter what patience is attainable when put in scenarios like these keep calm and patience is key to success being stressed is not the answer to becoming better and improvement and when you need something done.

“Mother cheetah trying to stalk prey for young in Masai Mara” by Animal People Forum is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.