HVAC in the Hyperreal

No matter how much money I offer to pay them, the HOA won’t let me park my “commercial vehicle” near my own house. My last one got broken into, $4,000 worth of tools went to a tweaker’s habit (unfortunately, this transaction was not captured in GDP or consumer spending statistics), and the window was busted out another three times, just for good measure. This all falls on the deaf ears of HOA arch-boomers, those men and women of iron.

It is 5:30 a.m. I have already smoked, brushed my teeth, and downed coffee. I’m walking down the pretty lagoon into a different neighborhood, where my work van is parked to avoid antagonizing the HOA. It’s cold and dark for now, but the day promises to be a Bay Area Indian summer classic.

About a month from today, the old Chinese immigrant who lives nearest to where I park the van will accost me in heavily accented English after I get home from a twelve-hour day, annoyed about me parking it near her house. The van is big and ugly, with a loud, garish wrap and logo, much like the vans of every other HVAC company bought up by PE/VC dorks in the last five years or so, and squeezed for every last cent of EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), so I get her frustrations. My frustration after this encounter is that she shouldn’t even be in my country, let alone yelling at me.

All I know is cigs, a Juul, and a Red Bull help me remember “you are in company uniform in a very identifiable company vehicle tracked by GPS” when I get possessed by rage at the average skill of Bay Area drivers.

But that’s the future. The Chinese woman is asleep, and so is the rest of the neighborhood. The highway is not asleep. People used to talk about rush hour, or going against traffic or with traffic. Such ideas are quaint artifacts of the past in the East Bay post-replacement migration. 880 is an ever-roaring monster, a gaping maw chewing up and spitting back out homicidal big rig drivers of quasi-legal status, foreigners with “STUDENT DRIVER PLEASE BE PATIENT” stickers on their bumpers like they’re fooling anyone, and guys like me.

HVAC in the Age of Decline

Miles and miles down the highway, about a quarter of a Juul cartridge down, is the shop. Our dubious 7 a.m. “safety” meeting commences, where we all pretend we care about OSHA for half an hour. But hey, at least they pay us for it. An update from the CFO (via Zoom) on how good or bad our EBITDA is as follows: Twice a month, the CFO tries gamely to explain this concept, but I resolutely refuse to care, and the installers just play Candy Crush or Raid: Shadow Legends

during this portion of the meeting. Then we get a corporate pep talk about how “we’re all a family” from the CEO (via Zoom). I down more coffee when it’s all mercifully over, then stop at the gas station for a Monster. White Monsters are a popular meme, but this is the black can, because frankly, that sugar-free shit is for faggots.

The first call is uneventful because my client, the proud proprietor of a barbershop with lots of cheap-looking gold paint and “gold” fixtures, isn’t there and doesn’t answer his phone. His contractor is there. “No sé, it’s working,” he says to me when I ask what’s supposedly wrong with the AC. Well, with nobody there to pay me, it’s not my concern anymore, so after a smoke and picking up a Red Bull, I’m off to the next one.

Rio Vista. I’ve never even heard of Rio Vista. I thought I knew the meaning of the phrase “all over Creation” until I started working for this company. They’re spawning whole towns into existence for me to go work in. Apparently, it’s north of Antioch on the delta, about 90 minutes away.

The delta is beautiful, though even way out here, the concrete bases of transmission towers aren’t safe from the omnipresent graffiti. I’ve never been to Louisiana, but I did watch the first season of True Detective. On a muggy, overcast September Friday, I imagine there’s some kinship between the two places.

A Fine American Mess

Gabriel Gigliotti

Around 10 a.m., I stop at Rio Vista’s Chevron (staffed by wiggers, which is a pleasant surprise) because I need more Juul cartridges and another Red Bull. There are those who speak of nicotine and caffeine as “nootropics.” All I know is cigs, a Juul, and a Red Bull help me remember “you are in company uniform in a very identifiable company vehicle tracked by GPS” when I get possessed by rage at the average skill of Bay Area drivers. They also have the side benefit of making clients more bearable.

Rio Vista strikes me as the kind of place that would’ve been the hometown of some astronaut back in the 60s or 70s. Now, it is the haunt of wigger-Mexican hybrids who work at the refinery, like my client, whom I will call Jay. Perhaps cracker is a better term; wiggers always struck me as a little forced, a performance. Jay is the genuine article. Bad tattoos, wife beater, tries to pay me in cash because he’s keeping money out of his bank account to avoid automatic bill payments. Works his ass off at the refinery doing something to do with high voltage. Tries to tip me in weed from his side hustle.

The house (in general disrepair), I think, either belongs to his parents or his baby mama. Their rooftop package unit isn’t working. I dodge dog shit with my ladder in one hand and my tool bag in the other, and head up to the roof. The asphalt shingles are worn out and slippery, but I make it. Long story short, his capacitor is blown. Jay does not have the $500 we charge for a capacitor, so I tell him what kind he has and how he can get it for cheap and explain to him how to install it (this is what prompts the attempted weed tip). After his baby mama Venmos him $80 for the diagnosis, he transfers it to his bank account and immediately pays me. I’m out of there. As I drive away, I hear Daniel Day-Lewis say, “A fine American mess” in my head.

The next one is 20 minutes back down to Antioch. I pull over to do some homework. I listen to the recording of the service call; the client is speaking Spanglish to our call center agent. They are talking in circles; our call center agent is AI. (Firing our best dispatcher a few weeks ago was good for EBITDA.)

The client isn’t there, but his wife is. Her name is Maria, but that’s about all she can tell me in English (and, as I’m always ready to quote in my best Bruce Willis impression, I only speak English and bad English). Their little six-year-old daughter tries to be our go-between as best she can. The three of us manage, through the power of teamwork and a phone translation app, to get me to the broken AC. Every previously living thing in the backyard is dead, and the ground is mud hardened and cracked into sharp, jagged puzzle pieces.

Another blown cap. Quinientos dólares, por favor. Esposo pays over the phone. The first actual repair of the day tends to feel the best, and this is no different. Maria looks relieved to have cold air again.

Monsters and Ennui

Back in the van, I scroll my X feed while my service app updates, and see a post on the For You tab (always a mistake to check) about how fake email jobs are soul-crushing. Next call is over an hour away in San Rafael. That’s another smoke and another Red Bull and about half a Juul. Now, there’s right-off-the-highway San Rafael, and there’s twenty-minutes-up-winding-coastal-roads-and-into-the-hills San Rafael. I head to the latter.

The houses become mansions (pretty on the outside, of dubious build quality on the inside) with large “grounds,” half-circle driveways, wrought-iron lampposts, and such like. From one corner of the Bay to another, from one end of a tax bracket to another. As I pull up the long driveway with immaculately manicured lawns and hedges on either side, I briefly reflect upon dropping out of one of the so-called “Colleges That Change Lives” to join the Marine Corps infantry, finish listening to “Money For Nothing,” and have a little laugh.

I am let in through a side door and greeted by a young, blonde, blue-eyed Swedish au pair. She would be cute if she were about thirty pounds lighter. I speak to the client, Laura, only over the Swedish au pair’s phone. She’s managing her kids at their tennis or swimming lessons or something like that. The furnace in Sweden’s “apartment” (a four-room addition to the west wing of the home) has a problem with a disconnected drain line. Another company told her that since it’s tightly fit into a closet with the drain line inaccessible to tools, the only way to fix it is to uninstall the furnace, which costs a pretty penny. This is about three-quarters true—you would have to uninstall it to fix it the way they proposed —but there is, in fact, a completely different way to fix it: a condensate pump, which will run about $1,300 (after the “Kamala Harris yard sign” upcharge). I’ll admit it’s always a little thrill to make another company look stupid.

Laura appreciates this honesty (Sweden is gamely trying to hide her annoyance at the commandeering of her phone for the long time it took to explain all this to a Real Housewife of Marin County). Do I think it’s worth it? Well, ma’am, I assessed the unit while investigating potential repairs. It’s about 20 years old, and blah blah blah. I launch into the standard spiel. Do you want a quote for a new one? Why yes, she would, and she also has four other furnaces in this fucking place, can I take a look at those too, and set up a quote for all five? Sure. Fine. One in a closet near the kitchen, that’s easy enough. One in an exterior closet that serves the master suite, also easy enough. Two more, in two separate fucking attics. Fantastic.

As I lug my ladder back down the sweeping staircase that leads down to the foyer, I catch a glimpse of an office with a man at a standing desk with bookcases that look like they’re serving mostly aesthetic purposes. He looks like whatever the Greek equivalent of “Black Irish” might be, which, upon consideration, may perhaps just be “Greek.” His eyes don’t twitch in my direction as I rattle by with my ladder and my crinkling plastic shoe covers. I take it this must be the man of the house.

He zips away in some queer little (electric) Audi as I put away my ladder in the van. Eventually, his wife buys a $16,000 furnace from me. The commission from it will keep me in Juul pods for a few weeks and a nice dinner or two with the missus, and that’s not nothing.

With traffic it’s going to be about 90 unpaid minutes to home. I drive along coastal Marin, over the Richmond Bridge, and along the edge of the belly of the Beast (Berkeley), catching the last hour of orange gold light as the sun sets in its full glory.

I put on “Money For Nothing” again and thank God for His many mercies.

Thomas Lee is an English major dropout who had an unremarkable enlistment in the Marine Corps Reserve. He is currently an HVAC technician and forklift operator in the San Francisco Bay Area.