Being the new guy at the HVAC company, I knew I was going to get a certain amount of hazing.
I never thought they were going to haze me by sending me to the house I had always had a fear of.
The one HVAC technician told me he had been to the house almost a year ago, and they had a casket in the furnace room. We used to live by the house, and there would be lights on at night, but you saw no one coming or going. At night we could hear a dog howl, but there were never any people. I couldn’t say no to do the furnace repair, but I wanted to ask someone to go with me. Instead of begging for help, I pulled up my big boy pants and went to work. When I got there, I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. It surprised me when a young woman came to the door. She told me she needed the furnace inspected and if it needed to be replaced; she wanted some information. I asked her to show me to the furnace room. I asked her how long she had lived here. She said her grandparents had lived there until they went into a nursing home two years ago. She was cleaning up the house and getting it for sale. Once the HVAC system was repaired or replaced, she was going to go back home. The house was beautiful inside, and I would have bet a paycheck that none of those other HVAC technicians had ever set foot in the house.