When I first got into this business 20 years ago it was a very different culture.
- I hesitate to call it “the Wild West” but in some ways it was quite wild.
I was a rookie at the time, so it was all new to me. I had no idea how the HVAC community worked, so when the boss told me to go slash the tires of a rival’s work truck, I did it! In fact there were several instances in which me and the other HVAC tech engaged in some criminal activity to screw over the enemy. The enemy in this case was the biggest HVAC contracting business in town. There were only 2 HVAC companies, and we were in second place. Our boss was the guy who owned the company, but he wasn’t HVAC certified. He did none of the work, but he was still the boss. There are rumors that he got the seed money to start his HVAC company with proceeds from criminal activities, and in retrospect that makes a lot of sense. The boss approached the HVAC business with the same ruthlessness that a drug dealer or a Mafia captain would use. We were never told to beat up any of the rival HVAC techs, but the boss did want us to mess with them. None of it worked out, the rival HVAC company got even bigger while ours started to falter. Six months later that rival approached me with a job offer to double my salary and become his new head HVAC tech, so guess where I started working next?