That's right. Furnaces . . . got have em, but who can figure em out? When it's frigid and below freezing the blasted thing won't come on; but let the temperatures rise and hover around 45 and the blasted thing won't shut off!!!!
4 a.m. and I awoke in a sweat - I thought what any 54 year old woman would think . . . hot flash, right? So I did what the average red blooded american woman would do and I threw off my pajamas and settled back in bed hoping that would cool my body down. WRONG. I continued to sweat and the bedroom was VERY warm. I listened and the furnace was running and running and running and running. I'm not the sharpest mechanical pencil in the toolbox, but I knew from the warmness of the air the furnace should be shutting off. So I climbed out of bed, found my robe and wandered through a VERY warm house. I went to the thermostat - it was set for 67 degrees but the room temperature was 85 degrees. My first thought was to call my dear son in law, my heating/cooling expert. Then I remembered it was 4 a.m. and perhaps I should check it out myself and call him as a last resort. Good plan, but where do I start. AHA! dear son in law showed me the manual shut-off switch on the front of the furnace. So down to the basement and into the furnace room I went. Hit the kill switch (sorry, motorcycle term slipped in) and the thing shut off! Ok. That was a good sign. Then I came back up and examined the thermostat. It is electonic (this should have been a clue) and the LCD (?) read out was very faint and the buttons used to adjust the setting were inoperable. I used all my strength (good thing I work out) and popped the cover off the front. Electronics need an energy source to operate, right? There staring back at me were 2 AA batteries! The thermostat has been there since we put the new furnace in somewhere between 5-7 years ago and the batteries were a well-kept secret! I went to my trusty junk drawer and retrieved some batteries, made the quick exchange, replaced the cover and tried the buttons - VOILA! they worked and were crystal clear - not faded. I returned to the basement and flipped the kill switch back to ON and I was back in business. It was still VERY warm so I opened the bedroom window so I could catch a few winks before the alarm went off at 5:30.
I've worked at my current job for 18 years. I'm on my fifth treasurer. And today, my work station was moved for the fifth time! The new treasurer asked what I thought and at this point I'm painfully honest. I told him - "It'll work. It's temporary. In a few years we'll have a new treasurer and I'll move again - that's why the maintenance men don't screw my desk pieces together - it saves them time when they need to dismantle it and move it." His jaw dropped to the floor before he chuckled and moved on. I'm probably a little bitter because he didn't take my concerns seriously. Offices have some very NOISY machines - copier, folder/sealer, postage meter etc. He moved the copier, fax and postage meter from our "work room" where all the machinery was kept to the main part of the office where we are expected to listen to them, concentrate and do our accounting jobs without error and have phone conversations with all the background noise. I explained my concerns and asked him to re-consider this plan - the problem is he didn't want to walk the extra steps to the work room. Or maybe it's one of the other girls that didn't want to walk and convinced it was a good plan. Who knows. But I'll be alright with it cuz IT'S TEMPORARY!!!!!!
Ciao for now
No comments:
Post a Comment