The other day I called the customer before I left my house to head to this house so he’d be ready for me. I’d rather give them a heads up so they can be there waiting for me as opposed to me waiting for them. Time is money, you know. When I call someone I always say the same thing when I call, “Hey how are ya? This is Troy, the electrician you called, looks like I’ll be there in about a half hour. Does that work for you?”

It’s a pretty basic line but gets straight to the point. Typically there are two types of responses I get back, “Alright perfect we’ll be here” or “Is there any way we can do something later I’m not around right now.” Which if that’s the case I’ll do some of my other calls and come back to this one later. No issue.

But this morning when I called this dude he put my mind in a pretzel. Instead of saying he was home waiting for me all he said to me was, “Oh my dad’s name was Troy…” There was silence after that. It was all he said. So I proceeded to tell him that I’ll be there in about a half hour and then he hung up. Without even saying bye. There was a long enough silence to know the conversation was over.

Naturally when I got there I used my name as my ice breaker. I asked, “Oh so your fathers name was Troy too, I bet he was wicked cool.” I thought it was a perfect line. I mean I don’t know any Troys that aren’t dope. It was a line that would work ninety nine percent of the time. Unfortunately this was one of the one percenters.

All he said was, “Yeah.” That was the last word he said to me. I figured out his problem, got the head nod to do his work, and didn’t hear him say another word until he said, “Alright thank you.” as I was walking out his front door to leave. I don’t know what kind of relationship he had with his father but if I had to guess it wasn’t a healthy one. Which baffled me? If that’s the case why would you even bring it up. Like of course I’m going to ask you about your father if he has the same name as me.

I think it’s safe to say he won’t be calling me back any time soon. Which is a shame because he needed a shit ton of electrical work.