Okay, let's try this again. I had the first paragraph written and all of a sudden it was gone. As I was saying,
These past few weeks have certainly gotten my attention. We went to meet our very first grandbaby. A girl, named Grace. As I predicted, it was two hours after our arrival before I could convince 'Grandmom' that I needed to meet her too. OF COURSE she is the most beautiful baby girl ever born!!! So says Grandpa, anyway. The next two weeks were spent as you might well imagine. My wife and I spent as much time as possible with her. It also happened that the kids were having their anniversary while we were there. Naturally we took the baby and sent them out for the evening. She's still not quite 2 months, so not much play time was involved. But lots of all the other things. Cuddling, feeding, burping, cleaning up after burping, you know. The usual. My first evening there, I was officially 'christened' by Grace, from both ends of her little body. After feeding she spit up on my shoulder and a little later had a bit of an 'overflow' problem with her diaper while she was on my lap.
Wouldn't trade a moment of it for the world.
But the good times just kept on rolling when I went back to work. I've spoken before about how things either change in the field, or the ladies on dispatch got it wrong. It has been a source of irritation for a while now. I had TWO of those kinds of jobs come up in two days, and it all worked out for me.
The first job, a store at the mall had a problem. They could lock the back door and remove the key, no problem. But if they unlock the door, the alarm goes off, and it doesn't matter if the key is in the lock or not. DO NOT ASK ME WHY. When the customer called, they said the key was stuck in the lock. What they meant was they were stuck leaving it in the lock so they could get out in an emergency. So, I was sent for entirely the wrong reason. This is an electrical problem. The lock works perfectly. Making a long story short, the customer wound up having it out with the manager on duty at the time, along with the boss. She simply wasn't going to pay close to $200 for me to come out and do nothing, while the lady on dispatch is trying to tell her to make an appointment for someone else to come out there and then have to pay again.
The way it worked out for me is that the customer was quite complimentary towards me. She said I did everything I could to get the thing to work. I don't know exactly what happened after that. I was told to leave. But I do know that there were a few phone calls between the customer, the manager on duty and the boss. I didn't have to mess with any of that for once. However, on the group chat later that day, the guy who did go out and fix it said that whoever installed it jury-rigged it from beginning to end and it was no wonder the thing failed. He also mentioned I did a perfect job on what little I could do and had reassembled the lock with no problems. I knew that, but it's nice to have someone else say that to the boss before he starts climbing on me for screwing something up.
The second job was the next day. And I must say that I found something that I had never seen before. The job was simple enough. Rekey two locks on an outside storage shed. I got the deadbolt done and put it back on the door, Per SOP I checked the lock. It didn't turn. I take it back off the door and check the key in the lock. It works fine. I put it back on the door. No go. I took it off again and looked at the actual bolt. I was so surprised, I took pictures and posted them on the group chat. The bolt in the door was MADE not to work. Why they made it that way, I don't have a clue. Nobody in the chat had ever seen something like it either. The only thing I can think of is that this prefab shed was a display model and so the lock didn't have to work. It was the last one the store had, they wanted to close it out and nobody ever thought to look at it when it was sold. Well, this is a selling opportunity for me. Pull that non-functional bolt out of the door and install a working one. I really wanted that bolt too. Just because I've never seen that before. But, no matter what I tried, it wasn't coming out of that door. After I had given up, finished the rest of the job and left, the boss calls and wants to know,
"You could have used a flat tip screwdriver on the back of the bolt and driven it out with a hammer."
Actually boss, if I had hit that screwdriver with any more force than I used, I would have broken the door. We don't want that.