Cranky Repair Guys 08/01/25

There are a lot of negative adjectives to describe people. Entitled, spoiled, stuck up, self-absorbed, etc. But when you are trying to describe a repairman who is less than happy at his or her job, there’s only one descriptive word that will do. “Cranky.” You’ve seen them. Usually, a guy who works alone in a ridiculously small, crowded room, covered with old appliances that he specializes in repairing. There’s one near me whose specialty is vacuum cleaners. Admittedly not as exciting as the espresso maker repairman we feature in our comics, but a good example nonetheless. This guy has a place cleverly called Suburban Vacuum Company, Inc. Yep, that’s where he is, the suburbs. And yeah, that’s what he repairs, vacuums. So, around a year or two ago, my wife and I had a malfunctioning Dyson vacuum cleaner. I called the guy up at Suburban and he told me to come on in. I parked on Main Street, grabbed the Dyson out of the trunk, and walked into an extremely narrow, poorly lit room and nobody was at the front desk. I shouted out, “Hellooooo” into the void and here came a pale, tall, thin man, limping on crutches from the back of his office. He said, “Hello,” and I said, “What happened? Did you have an accident?” And he replied, “Lemme see the vacuum cleaner.”

That’s pretty cranky but wait, there’s more (I just can’t get advertising out of my system)! The guy looks at the Dyson, doesn’t say anything to me for a few minutes and after he has made his diagnosis, tells me, “I’m gonna have to send out for a new motor-driven fan and I can’t do anything until it gets here.” I say, “So, are we talking about a week, a month, a…”. He responded, “When it gets here.” Okay then. At this point you are probably dying to know how long it took to fix the damn Dyson. Well, I ain’t gonna tell you because I’m a cranky copywriter, so there!@*. Okay, I’ll tell you. I’m not that cranky, although my wife would strongly disagree. It took 3 months. No joke.

John, having no idea about my vacuum cleaner experience, just came out of the blue one day and said, “Let’s come up with a new character. How about a cranky repairman?” Vacuum Cleaner guy immediately popped into my head. Though the above experience was unpleasant it didn't cause me to lose my cool (what cool?). Not so when it came to the Optimum TV guy on the phone last week. The remote wasn’t working even after putting in two new batteries. The Optimum tech kept making suggestions, “Can you simultaneously press the mute button and the control button and hold them down for 3 seconds? Okay, are you getting a signal?” I said, “Nope, still a blank screen.” He replied, “No problem, try to go to the streaming box behind the tv and point the remote directly at the box.” I replied, “Which box is the streaming box?” Followed by, “Okay I see it, but still no picture.” And again he responded with, “No problem, try this….” After the third or fourth “no problem,” I said, “THERE IS A PROBLEM! THE DAMN TV ISN’T RESPONDING TO THE REMOTE!!!” And somehow, I was greeted by a dial tone. Sigh.

So that’s it for this week. Thank goodness neither John nor I am cranky. I can hear you snickering in the background, so please cut it out. And may you have a repair free weekend,

Andy and John