“That’s right,” he said. “Get your head up in there.”
I was standing on a ladder in my room, peering around inside the ceiling compartment that housed the air conditioning unit.
Mister Shelton, the maintenance man, stood behind me, giving orders.
“Now tell me what you see,” he continued.
What did I see?
Hard to say.
I had no idea what the hell I was looking at.
I focused on the area illuminated by the magnetized flashlight Mister Shelton had stuck to the compartment’s inside wall.
Well, I offered, I can tell you what I don’t see.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Water.
Nothing appeared to be leaking.
“Okay, okay . . . that’s good,” he said, pleased with my report.
This was not how I thought I’d be spending my afternoon.
I was at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia.
I hadn’t been there in more than a decade.
It looked mostly the same.
That included the tired, seventies-era building in which I stayed.
Wall Manor.
How in the hell had the Navy come up with that name for that building?
There was nothing manor about it.
Whereas much of the base consisted of regal, red-brick, World War II-era buildings, Wall Manor stood out as a Cold War relic the Navy hadn’t updated since the Reagan administration.
It was by no means luxurious.
It wasn’t even nice.
By civilian standards, I’d say it fell somewhere in between a pay-by-the-hour motel and a Super 8.
But it was clean. And secure. And had a coffee maker.
In other words, it was adequate.
Anything more was gravy, as far as the Navy was concerned.
And, as my Marine Corps friends would be quick to point out, it wasn’t a tent.
Marines.
Those guys . . .
I once participated in an exercise off the coast of Kauai.
My squadron had sent two helicopters from Oahu, along with a twenty-person detachment of pilots, crewmen, and maintenance personnel.
We all stayed in beach cottages.
And when we weren’t out shooting missiles or dropping torpedoes, we were drinking beer on the beach.
Which is exactly what you’re supposed to do when you’re lucky enough to be in the military, in Hawaii, participating in some exercise.
The Marines, on the other hand, set up a tent city at the airfield.
There were about a hundred of them, all crammed between two taxiways.
No cottages. No beer-drinking on the beach.
You’d occasionally see a couple of them tossing around a football.
But that was it.
Semper Fi, Marines.
You can keep your tents.
Anyway.
My room had seemed a touch warm when I’d checked in.
Maybe it’s just me, I thought.
It was spring in southern Virginia, with highs in the eighties.
But I assumed it would cool down that night.
It didn’t.
And I sweat myself to sleep.
The next morning, I studied the thermostat on the wall.
Like the Wall Manor itself, it was vintage.
It had a locked, clear-plastic case surrounding it.
The analog dial was set to sixty-five degrees.
Beneath it was an on/off switch set to the off position.
You idiot, I scolded myself.
The air conditioning wasn’t even turned on.
I flipped the switch to the on position and stood on my tiptoes with my hand against the ceiling vent.
About a minute later, hot air began to blow from it.
I mean, really hot.
Of course.
I called the front desk and reported the problem.
We’ll send someone right up, the lady said.
I didn’t have much going on that day, so I decided to stick around.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
A short, skinny guy wearing a khaki work shirt stood outside.
There was a nametag pinned over his right pocket that said “Shelton.”
I didn’t know if it was his first or last name.
It could have been either. Like Kramer.
Behind him was a large cart holding various tools, spare light bulbs, and a new toilet seat still in its packaging.
Thanks for coming by, I told him.
And then I directed him to the thermostat.
He looked at it for a minute, then flipped the switch to the on position.
Then he stood back and pointed this laser temperature-reading thing at the vent.
“Nope, nope,” he said. “That’s not right.”
According to his sensor, the air coming out of the vent was ninety degrees.
He walked back to the hallway and his tool cart and fished around until he found a new thermostat.
“We’ll try the easy thing first,” he said.
He had it installed a few minutes later.
This time, when he switched the air on, it blew cold.
Problem solved.
As he was packing up to leave, a guy dressed the same as Mister Shelton, but about twenty years younger, stuck his head in my room.
“Shelton, I need you downstairs,” he said. “We have that thing this morning.”
“Yup. Be right there,” Shelton replied, curtly.
He sounded frustrated.
When the other guy was gone and out of earshot, Shelton turned to me and said, “Man, that jive turkey . . .”
Jive turkey?
When’s the last time you heard someone called a jive turkey?
It was fantastic.
Shelton then went on to explain that his boss—the younger guy—always seemed to want him sitting in a meeting, not out fixing things.
“It should be about keeping customers happy,” he said, “not sitting in some meeting.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
Speaking of meetings, I had one just after lunch.
I returned to my room when it concluded and found it comfortably cooler.
But, after a few minutes, I heard something.
Something dripping.
Shit.
As I stepped into the area beneath the ceiling air conditioning unit, my socks quickly became saturated.
I looked up.
Sure enough, there were droplets clinging to the entire perimeter of the compartment’s door.
Could you send me Mister Shelton again? I asked the lady at the front desk.
He was back a few minutes later.
“Maybe the drain’s clogged,” he said. “Or it could be the chiller.”
He got on a small stepladder, opened the compartment, and started looking around inside.
“Man, my eyes . . . they’re no good with this diabetes,” Shelton said after a few minutes.
He wasn’t complaining. Just explaining.
I’m no air conditioner repair man, I told Shelton, but I’d be happy to get up there and have a look around, if you’d like.
“Really?” he asked. “That would be great.”
And so I took his place on the ladder.
Where I would remain, off and on, for the next two hours.
I’d look and feel around, and then report my findings to Shelton as he stood below me.
Then he would go rooting around on his cart for a tool or go running to the maintenance office on the floor above for whatever he was missing.
He would then get up on the ladder, and I would hand him nuts, bolts, and tools, or hold the flashlight for him.
Shelton chatted away the entire time.
He seemed pleased to have an assistant.
I like to think we made a good team.
And it wasn’t a terrible way to pass an afternoon.
But, after a couple of hours, I was ready for it to be over.
I just wanted my room back.
We eventually got everything buttoned up and all the tools back on Shelton’s cart.
“Keep an eye on that,” he told me. “If it starts leaking again, call the front desk.”
I assured him I would.
And then I wished him pleasant afternoon.
Later that night, after I’d just gotten into bed, my room phone rang.
What the hell is this? I thought.
I really didn’t want to be bothered.
“Good evening sir,” the lady said. “This is Marie at the front desk.”
Yes?
She continued, “One of our maintenance men called and asked that I call you to find out if your air conditioner started leaking again.”
Shelton was checking up on me.
It was not leaking, I told her.
But please thank Mister Shelton for asking.
What an incredibly thoughtful thing to do.
And what a great lesson.
Thank you, Mister Shelton,
For showing me what good customer service looks like.
For what being a true professional looks like.
It certainly doesn’t hurt
For jive turkeys like me
To be reminded of such things
From time to time.