How was YOUR day?...

Just because I think you all need something to giggle over:

This morning Dad and I had to do work on a property pole - a very TALL property pole! 11m in fact!So, we start at 6am (early start, we normally start at 7am), because we know we have a really long drive to the job. Its out at Miva - the back end of no where! We get to town and pick up a cherry picker from the local Handi Hire, and then trundle on out to the job. Today we were working for a Dairy Farmer that we've known since he was a teenager, working at his Dad's dairy, where we also worked.

After accessing the situation, we gear up, put all of our necessary tools in the cage (of the cherry picker), and tie on the necessary cables, conduit etc with rope to the external of the cage. We then proceed to put the 'legs' out, and level out the picker so that there are no issues. (If it isn't level, it wont lift). We then climb aboard.

Approximately 1/2 way up the pole (remember: this is a VERY tall pole!) we start having difficulties in getting it to go higher...in fact, its almost acting as though its running low on hydraulic fluid...and then...it STOPS!

3/4 of the way up the pole!!! *not impressed*

So, we stuff around for FOREVER trying to get it to work again, and its getting hotter and hotter, and I can feel my arms starting to burn :( Thankfully, Noely, our customer, is a bit of a sticky-beak (in a good way) and was hanging around the bottom of the cherry picker. This turned out to be incredibly fortuitous for us, as he was able to convert the controls back to the ground control panel, and try to lower us from there. We are far too high to be able to reach a ladder up to us - even an extension ladder!

After a bit, we conclude that we cant get it to work again (the motor was still running fine, just the up/down levers weren't co-operating!) so I decided to call Handi Hire. Typically, the phone number of the hire place is written on or near the control panel. In what could have been a 'predictable' moment, we realise that there is no number listed anywhere on the cherry picker! Again, we are fortunate in realising that I'd brought the mobile up with me (usually I'd leave it in the truck while we're working on a job like this one) AND I have great mobile service! On the down side, I don't have Handi Hire's number listed in the phone... *sigh*...BUT I do have my mate Google on stand-by :D

After a lot of stuffing around, and much-ness burning-ness of my arms (Dad is SO lucky he has an olive complexion!) I get a hold of Shane at Handi Hire. I explain the situation to him (in my 'nice' voice) and he says I need to speak to Chris, who is serving a customer at the moment, so he'll get Chris to give me a call back in a few minutes. I explain (more sternly this time) that I am stuck half-way up a pole and its very hot! He just repeated himself and got off the phone in a hurry.

Dad is not impressed, and frankly, neither am I.

Noely keeps fiddling with the ground controls but doesn't come up with anything useful *sigh*

After about 20 minutes, Noely suggests I should try calling Chris again - maybe he's forgotten about us.

I call again, and again get Shane. Shane sounds ticked that I'm bothering him. I use my 'Im-pretty-ticked-too' voice, and I let him know that I'm still waiting for a call back! Shane explains that Chris is still helping his customer, and adds that he, too, is helping a customer, so he cant help me at the moment...and then proceeds to basically hang up on me! The flippin' cheek! Fool's lucky Dad didn't make the call, is all I'm sayin'.

I relay this message on to the boys, and they express great displeasure in Handi Hire's customer service. (I shall leave it to your imagination, what was said...but basically, it wasn't flattering!) LOL :)

Anyway, after about another 15 minutes, Chris *finally* calls back and *eventually* gives us the instructions on how to get Noely to manually winch us back down. By this time, we've been cooking in the heat of the day for about an hour, and I am now lobster red (How I covet Dad's olive complexion!!)

We take the stupid cherry picker back to Handi Hire, and book a different one for tomorrow morning!

What an epic waste of a day! So, tomorrow, we get to start even earlier - starting at 5:30am - as we are now a whole flippin' day behind in our work week *sigh*, so that means we're going to have to play serious catch-up so that we don't have to work on the weekend.

I hope everyone else's day was far more productive! ;)