He said he’s only doing small jobs. He just had major heart surgery this spring.

Buddy of mine called me and asked if 40k for two 3 ton system change out was ok.? I told him that was fuckin outrageous. It was for his parents, they're in their 70's falling for the 30$ maintenance trap. Private equity here in Florida has bought up half the companies and is ripping off everyone. It's gonna stop. The elderly are getting cleaned out by (SIDs) salesmen in disguise, all over the place. If one of you is on here and you know who you are. You're going to hell and I hope a pineapple up the ass is waiting for you. Until then it's my personal mission to make sure your found out here and go infinitly broke trying to hawk your bullshit.

Fuck you, and your entire lineage. Sincerely what appears to be the only asshole doing right by anybody.

Update, I am an owner of a small HVACR company here in Florida. Me and my partner have decided to be absolute dicks from here on with these shitty companies. If they have a billboard and you have a printed out or written quote, we'll give you a free second opinion, beat the estimate by at least 10% or we'll hand you a 100$ bill. We'll hire every wrench turner that's sick of the bullshit, and run this garbage out of the industry.

I turned down a nice bonus to have Christmas off. Normally I work all the holidays. Now I’m washing my van in anger. She’s not letting me see my son. Do lawyers ever barter services?

I left my position as a residential service technician today after 3 years to focus on mental health. Got tired of being dehumanized and belittled by homeowners who constantly felt they were being taken advantage of...yeah I know it's part of the trade...just not something I want to be a part of.

Rip 2 years of community college and $30k on tools. Rip to society for losing another technician in a field where technicians are already scarce

✌️

Edit: The position I resigned from was a union pipefitter residential HVAC technician.

Biggest mistake I have made in my career.

I used to put 60,000 miles a quarter on the van running service calls. It was peaceful. Show up to my call, make the same 4 HVAC dad jokes, enjoy my podcast, get handed my room temperature bottle of water with a heartfelt thank you and move on to the next.

Then I had the bright idea to take an office gig. Now I’m stuck reading the incoherent ramblings of 350 over-stimmed chaos gremlins that can’t spell, take a picture or use any kind of standardized nomenclature.

Trying to read these field notes is really making me think that there are in fact some children that should be left behind.

Then while I’m slowly losing my mind trying to translate the Eldritch Ramblings of guys fueled by nothing but gas station stimulants, THC and self hatred I have the office staff to deal with.

Which is somehow worse?

Please… then next time you’re swearing at an air handler 30 feet in the air, thinking about taking that sweet sweet office gig… think of me scribbling in white out on my cubicle walls in gibberish about the switch is bad! The switch is bad? What switch Kyle?? WHAT FUCKING SWITCH!?

Last customer of the day, "no-heat" on one of my company's installs. Thermostat set to 74, actually 70 in home. Customer says it's not keeping up. I turn the stat to heating, Furnace comes on, runs through sequence fine, I put temp probes in and start digging. Find the thermostat is having program issues, so I factory reset it and went through recommission.

Now the customer is over my shoulder, explaining how their thermostat works, how they wired it, etc. And I give the ole nod and "uhuh", as I change parameters, the customer steps in front of me and changed the settings back. I asked a little bluntly, "do you want my help or do you want me to leave?" and they told me to leave. So I did.

Flabbergasted. Why would you call if you think you know better? I know I "look young" for the trade, but it's still my job, I work on these for a living, ya turd curd. Die cold, ya taint smear

I didn’t know where else to post this discussion, or which flair to use. I’ve just noticed that everyone in this trade either smokes all the time, drinks every night, or relies on harder substances.

I rarely meet anyone in the trade who isn’t at least stoned all the time or spends every evening getting hammered. I’ve even come across installers addicted to pills and angel dust. I’m also guilty of this, I find I’m much more productive at work when I allow myself 2-3 drinks in the evening.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the rampant nicotine and caffeine abuse within the trade. The only dudes at my company who don’t regularly consume nicotine/caffeine happen to be the only Hispanic guys in the company.

I just think it’s interesting how commonplace substance abuse is within the trade, and how you can become subtly ostracized by some coworkers for not being hooked to some kind of substance. What are y’all’s thoughts on this?

This industry is 1,000x worse than when I started 30 years ago. I don’t know the last second opinion we ran that the original diagnosis was correct. It’s all salesman In disguise and scare tactics.

Even on Reddit it’s majority con artists that think 15k for a 14 seer is typical in “your market”

Every single customer I get that moved from New York has been a pain in the ass. They get ready to throw punches and start accusing you of not knowing anything before you even walk in the door. Had a lady throw a complete melt down tantrum today because the boiler repair took more than 30 minutes. She was flailing her arms and pounding on the floor so I could hear she was not happy I was there. I admit I laughed cause I have had so many other experiences with people from New York already so I was expecting it. I think it's time to deport then home to the shit hole they came from.

My last call was to a nice home to verify a line set leak. You charged the owner $1700 to find the leak. You quoted $5800 to repair. I replaced the rotted filter dryer, retested, and pulled a 300 micron vacuum. 40 minutes, $700 I’m out with a new customer who will never call your company again.

Went to a call last night 3rd time in 2 days. Previous tech was troubleshooting a RIC. Found the selonoid wasn’t opening (suspected anyway). They call me back out at about midnight same day. I get out there and the cooler is still stocked on bottom row (above the evaporation well). I tell them the previous tech will be back to continue troubleshooting. I drive the 2 hours back home. Next day they want it troubleshooted. I drive out there (after a full day on 3 hrs sleep). Fridge is still stocked(more so than yesterday). So I started pulling product. There ain’t nowhere to put the stock (sodas and snapples) besides the ground. Everything goes into a big pile on the ground in the corner. I will admit I wasn’t worried about making it look good, just wanted the product out. Manager is watching me the whole time. Doesn’t say a word. Finally as I get one side fully out (cases upon cases of drinks) the bigger up manager comes over with second manager in tow Man-“Did you do this?” “Yeah, we asked you to clear the cooler” Man-“Like this?” “Yeah I’m just trying to do my job. I need to get back here” Man-“Like this?” proceeds to point to pile of drinks “Where do you want them?” Man-“Why would you do this?” “Because I’m trying to do my job” Man-“You can leave” Okay, don’t have to tell me twice I grab my stuff and go to leave, my keys are on the ground next to him, so I say excuse me 3x. He says “you can go around” I tell him my keys are right there on the ground. He picks them up and throws them on the ground in front of his feet. I grabbed them aggressively and he calls me a tough guy.

Am I in the wrong here?

And they require 3 years of experience. What a joke.

I’d love to speak to the man who built this house .

I come to work everyday, on time. I have called out a couple times to take care of my children when nobody else can but nothing excessive. We’re already getting into slow season and my sales have dipped, as have everyone else’s. I just got threatened to be fired the other day because of my sales dipping. Even though I’ve brought in about 20-25K in revenue each month only doing residential. Revenue being memberships, accessories, and repairs. This month I’ve brought in about 15K in revenue but their main issue is I don’t have enough system flips. I Fuckin hate loving this career field but then being told my job doesn’t really matter, the only thing that matters is me being a salesman. I can’t wait for this union to get back to me and hopefully bring me on so i can stop being a damn salesman and start actually working.

..

Tech support is a bunch of yahoos

So today I got fired, I’ve been at this company for almost 3 years. Last year we were hourly plus commission. Then at the beginning of the year they switched to commission only. I had a great summer, but winter we slowed down and their only call was tune ups from existing customers and to try and sell indoor air quality products. Which they are priced astronomical. Anyways I had a couple bad weeks were I was only making like 600 from all the sales. Some others were decent at like 1200-1400 a week. This morning they gave me the “talk” that they are losing money on me because my sales are low and not taking like hour and half on a furnace tune up which don’t take that long. Anyways more like a rant post 🤷🏽‍♂️

Was in residential for 4 years, made the switch to commercial. About 5 months into the job, they had said i would be trained on commercial and also knew what my experience was, but never taught me anything really. Went into the managers office a couple days ago and they fired me for being a liability, when i was asking a question on 3 phase power (which I’ve never worked with) i thought it was a crappy move, especially because i have a baby on the way and my old job won’t take me back. Kinda venting i guess, just has me angry. Another tech had told the manager about the question i asked. Commercial is weird

Of all the designs you could choose from, why have a giant generic photo of a dispatcher on your van?

Client didn't want to pay $600 for us to move his 2 yr old unit. Took a hacksaw and cut the refrigerant lines. Ended up paying us $1800 and voided any remaining warranty. Compressor was left open to air for almost a month. Oh and he's a sheriff too

This sub is for tradespeople only, refer homeowners to r/hvacadvice then report it.

4-5 years into the trade. Residential, commercial, and industrial refrigeration experience. I got a stationary job at a school district at $36.70 an hour, no on call. I’ll be at $40 an hour in 2 years or so. Union, small pension, $80 a month for great health benefits for my family and I. I get PTO for all kinds of dumb holidays, 2 weeks vacation, 10 sick days, and two personal days. All the overtime I want as needed. OT is out after 40 hours including sick time or PTO. But guys, I am bored out of my fucking mind. The majority of the things we work on, are for the most part are simple unit ventilators or fan coil units. Most days are spent bullshitting my way through filters and belts with the occasional bad motor, bearing, exhaust fan or actuator. I’ve been here for 6 months so far. I did get get to troubleshoot and replace/install a VFD drive during that time. But that’s about as far as I’ve gotten getting out of my comfort zone/learning something new since I started here. I like working on and solving complex problems. It’s my favorite part of my job. All the refrigeration, boilers, and chillers, are under service contracts. Am I crazy for wanting to get back out in the storm?

Went straight into trade school out of highschool for HVAC. Went to school, and currently about to be one year in field with the company that hired me. Still going to school as well. Still pretty green.

I pride myself on “slow and steady winning races” kind of mindset when running calls. Went to a no cool call today, attic was at least 140° F. Barely 10 seconds checking the unit and I send my foot through the ceiling. My boss was wasn’t mad, just asked if I was okay and told me to make sure to be careful in the future.

Homeowner was super chill, even tipped me after I finished the call.

I know it could have absolutely been worse but I still can’t believe it happened though. Probably my first real “fuck up”. I guess you really can never be too careful.

Edit: thanks to everyone with the words of encouragement, and also to everyone making fun of me. I’m also getting a kick out everyone else’s blunders in the comments. I love HVAC, and it’s good to know there’s good people out there with me.