At RooterPLUS, we get interesting calls all of the time. Last week we received a very interesting call. A woman from Gainesville called and told my call taker that she had dropped a ring in the toilet and wondered if we could get it out. This is not the first "jewelry down the drain" call we have received, but there was something that made this call different. When my call taker asked for her contact number, the customer gave it to her but told us that we could not leave a message on the machine because her mailbox was full. It turns out that her son had died unexpectedly a couple of days ago and his voice was on her machine and the mailbox was full. She refused to delete any of his messages and was going to buy a new machine. The woman was in tears, which then lead to my call taker being in tears. We sent a technician out.
Our tech arrived and soon found out that the ring had been in her late husband's family for over one hundred years. Her husband passed away less than three years ago, and this is all she has left. We removed her toilet and put a camera down her line. Unfortunately, the ring was nowhere to be found. It had made its way to the septic tank. Even though we were unable to retrieve the ring, we got a call from the customer after our tech had left the home. She once again broke down in tears and said that the employee we had sent was "one of the nicest men she had ever met." This particular tech has seven (yes…seven!) children. The customer loved this and felt like she connected with him.
So now we have a very sweet lady, dealing with some terrible tragedy in her life, who takes the time to call the office and thank us for sending such a nice and compassionate technician. But, she does not have her ring back. This is where RooterPLUS can make a difference. We called the customer (I had another call taker call because the initial one could not contain her tears) and told her that we were going to come to her house and pump her tank for free. We will pump it very slowly and remove all liquids. Then we will try to use a fine mesh pool net to try to find the ring. We will go out later this week and try our hardest.
As the General Manager of a large Plumbing, Septic, Heating and Air company it is very gratifying to do nice things for our customers. This incident also revealed something else about my employees. Even though all of my employees are on 100% commission based pay, I had three of my septic technicians offer to go to this woman's house. Knowing that this might turn out to be an all day endeavor, three of them offered to basically work for free to help her out. Working in an environment that is surrounded by people who want to help others is what makes my job great.
Stay tuned and see how this plays out…
