Posts by smilr

Re: Palo Alto to Halfmoon Bay. 1AM.

Let me see if I can translate:

Our hero service tech is called up at around 1 am by an Executive level employee who is suffering a power outage. The executive's problem is that the site in Halfmoon Bay California is without power, and their backup generator isn't working right. Sadly, the executive can't manage to communicate well over the phone, so our hero has no chance of figuring out what is wrong by asking the executive questions, much less succeed in having the executive actually do anything to fix this.

So our hero drives his Ford Taurus with the better than average 'SHO' engine from Palo Alto to Halfmoon Bay at 1 am. The road between these places is very twisty on hilly terrain, so making the trip in only 40 minutes in the dark is not advisable for those who are not familiar with the roads.

Upon arriving at the job site, our hero finds that the executive HAD managed to get the generator running, but did NOT figure out how to operate the switch which swaps the building between external power and internal generator power. Nothing was broken. Flip this one last transfer switch and the problem was solved.

Our hero was very angry and verbally expressed his displeasure at having to drive a dangerous road very fast at 1 am because an executive level employee both could not figure out a big honking huge obvious AC transfer switch, and also lacked the communication skills that would have allowed our hero to walk them through the fix over the phone.