He Does Have A Mean Streak

If anyone knows Ron, you know he is my exact opposite.

For as over the top, gregarious, loud and obnoxious as I am, Ron is everything but. He is so laid back, so calm, the glass is always half full kinda guy. Like I said, my total opposite. While I am ready to fly off of a handle, he is like whatever. So, that is Ron's temperament, in a nutshell. Most days, he keeps me sane, and probably out of trouble.

A little background. Ron is in the computer service industry. For one of his customers, he's on call 24/7. He's gotten called out of the house in the middle of the night more than once.

The company he works for is based out of California. There are other guys that also have accounts that have 24/7 coverage. So, between five or six guys in the company, nationwide, they take turns being on call for the whole company for after hours calls.

Once the corporate office shuts down at 5:00 pm Pacific time, their calls roll over to their answering service. If a call comes in, the answering service will route it to the person on call to triage the call. When Ron has been on corporate on call, Ron has been known to talk someone through a repair right over the phone. Other times, he will just schedule their local rep to be on site during business hours. And, for certain customers that need immediate assistance, he will push the call up the ladder with his company to get the appropriate person out of bed and on to the road.

When the corporate office turns the phones over to the answering service at 5:00 pm California time which is 8:00 pm Ohio time, you can almost set your clock on the week that Ron is on corporate on call that a phone call will come in from the answering service every night just to remind Ron that he is on call for the overnight hours. Yeah, no kidding, he got the memo.

I mean c'mon. Maybe a phone call on the night that you start on call just to remind you in case you didn't look at the schedule, but every night for a week??

The last on call week Ron had he was feeling a little punk one night. Shortly after dinner, he just went to bed. I was sitting in the office upstairs just before 8:00 when I actually thought about going into the bedroom and confiscating his phone so it wouldn't wake him up when it rang at 8:00. But, i didn't. Right on time, the phone rang, Ron answered it and just went off on the poor operator! I heard him yelling from out here!

How dare they call him so late! Didn't they realize that not everyone lives in California? He is in Ohio for crying out loud and it is LATE here! Now, remember, it was only 8:00 pm here! But, being woken out of a sound sleep, poor Ron was in the middle of his night. The operator must have thought he was nuts, but he apologized and hung up.

When Ron shook the cobwebs out of his head a little later that night, he realized what time it was even though his body felt it was the middle of the night. A case of regret washed over him and he just felt terrible.

He notified his corporate office about what happened, so if they got a complaint on him, he told corporate he deserved it. He was just not feeling well and he was out of it.

So, what happened for our mild tempered guy? The answering service changed their ways!! When he is on call now, they call him at 6:00 pm OUR time! They are not even on the clock yet in California, but they call him at 6:00 to remind him that he's on call.

Yeah, he doesn't get riled very often, but when he does, you remember it!! And you listen! I wanna grow up to be like him!