Friday, June 25, 2010

Why not take the long way?

I was very anxious and edgy when I came home yesterday evening. I realized that my fridge was not working.

Since I'm a new house owner, I'm not an expert on dealing with this kind of problem. I know I can troubleshoot minor works at home, like; changing the doorknob; fixing the shower valve, or simple carpentry works. But to understand how and why my fridge suddenly stop working is way out of my homegrown skill.

I had some repairs done in my suite from the time I moved in, and this was courtesy of our wonderful caretaker, Mr. Kumar. So since I had no clue whatsoever how to deal with this fridge problem, I called him again to ask for assistance.

This morning, a big guy name Dave came by to fix my fridge. To my unuttered surprise, it was nothing serious. He said that it was just the timer that went off.

He didn't know that there was a deep sigh of relief inside of me. I was glad that I don't have to buy a new fridge or go into that trouble of pulling out the fridge from my apartment for major repair.

So he changed the timer without further ado. Alas! My fridge was up and cooling again.

Then came the most tricky part of the deal. When I asked him how much I owed him, he said, "110 plus tax." Woh! That much in 15 mins? And there was another catch. He accidentally mumbled, (I guessed) "If Mr. Kumar is paying, it'll be a different price." There was a sudden buzzer in my ear. "Really?!" I murmured inside. So I thought of another way to bargain out, or better yet, swerved the deal in my favor. I told him that I might need to talk to Mr. Kumar regarding the payment because he was also a part of this, and that I might need to pay him as well. So after a long pause and few moments of chatting, we agreed that as soon as I talked to Mr. Kumar, I'd call him and he'd come back for the money.

When he left, I was thinking. What if I just gave him the cheq, then all was done and we could both moved on. On the otherhand, I wanted to know how much money I'd save if Mr. Kumar would be involved in this transaction. So I waited til I got hold of Mr. Kumar.

In the end, it paid off. I did the right thing. Mr. Kumar told me that he'd talk to the guy, and I'd just pay him 100 bucks in cash. So in 30 minutes, I ran to the bank quickly and deal was over. I saved around $20. I was happy.

Sometimes, it's worth delaying things and taking the long way, instead of the usual
shortcut. Because you'll never know what the long way has in stored for you. It can be a new discovery or a better deal. You'll never know...