Memorial Day weekend is a great weekend. In the pool industry, it signifies the end of the first rush for pool openings. Most people want their pool up and beautiful for this weekend, so the pressure drops on you like an anvil just before the weekend. The past three weeks, I've been working 13-14 hour days Monday thru Friday and then another 5-9 hours on Saturday. And yet, I'm sure there are people out there, angry right this moment, because something is wrong with their pool and if they call our office, they will receive this wonderful message:
"Thank you for calling. After a long and stressful opening season, our crews have been given a long-deserved vacation for the Memorial Day weekend. We will reopen on Tuesday, May 31 at 8 AM. If you have an emergency, please leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thank you."
Gotta love the open-ended "as soon as we can." Let me just tell you, I'm the "we" in that statement and I'm gonna crack open a beer in about 4 hours, at which time the "soon" will immediately switch to Tuesday at 8 AM.
The fact of the matter is, when you're dealing with about 300 clients, all of which have a body of water, powered by something electrical, with a gas fired heater, somebody's gonna have an emergency and they're just gonna have to suck it up.
For now, my plan for the day is to go get my old lawn chairs back from my parents' house, pick up some beer, dig up my dying maple tree ($60 and it can't stand all the rain...fucking plants.), then sit and eat hamburgers and hot dogs for the rest of the day.
God bless the men who died so that I may grill out on the weekend (in their memory), and not worry about someone else's swimming pool.
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