The Freezer

Forty years ago, a journeyman, Kenny Hickman, said, “If you got a customer looking over your shoulder? I mean right up on you? Trying to help you or whatever? What you do is, you pretend to get zapped. And you just give ‘em an elbow in the stomach. Like this. That’ll back ‘em off. I’m serious.”

You don’t want someone watching you troubleshoot a machine. Lots of times, when you’re looking at a rat’s nest of wires and relays and pressure controls and circuit boards and stuff, you don’t have a schematic. You need to go through it one step at a time.

First of all, you do need to talk to the customer. It’s unavoidable. What’s the complaint? What are the symptoms? Is the thing running at all? If not, do we have main power? If yes, do we have control power? Is our control circuit open somewhere? Do we have control power at my control relay? Which one is the control relay? Dammit. I guess I gotta trace these wires. Now, take a powder. I need to do this. I don’t need you hanging around.

The worst case scenario is that the customer has already gone through the machine trying to get it to run. In this case, the initial problem won’t present itself until you undo whatever the customer did. Either way, the last thing you need is an audience. You want to be left alone. So you can go through it your own way.

So. You find the problems. Fix them. Test the machine. Test it again. Test it again. And go to the next job. It’s pretty much a flowchart process. All binary. If this, then that. If that then this other thing. Voltage or no voltage? Open or closed? Operational or not operational?

Unless you’re able to disconnect your personality in your free time from your personality in your repair-guy time, performing service work will ruin you for interpersonal relationships. For one thing, if want to be alone all the time, and you tell everyone to scram, you might have trouble with making friends. What’s more, if you try to apply your flowchart troubleshooting approach with, say, your wife, you’re pretty much fucked.

“Hey. Listen. I already asked you if you wanted to go to the concert, and you said no. So I said I’d go on my own. Then you said you wanted to go. So I said good. We can go together. Then you said it didn’t seem like I wanted you to go. When I just said good. We could go together. And then you get angry for some reason. Maybe because I listed the progression of our conversation thus far. I don’t know what to think. All this gray area frightens and confuses me. I’m sorry. Listen. Listen. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to terminate this conversation now. And I’ll be moving on to another conversation with the next person. It’s the best I can do. Have a good day, ma’am.”

That won’t go well.

On the other hand, some things you learn on the job will help with your personal relationships.

A few weeks ago, for example, I got a call on a small freezer. It was on the cook’s line in a Mexican restaurant. What you want to do when you’re working on a cook’s line is, you want to stay out of the way of the cooks. If you completely block the line, you might as well close down the restaurant for the day. It’s best, if at all possible, to pull the equipment away from the wall and sneak behind it, back where the lost Sharpies and spatulas and sharp knives congregate. You sneak back there with your tool pouch and your trouble light. This is as close to alone as you’re going to get in a commercial kitchen. Then, from behind the machine, you can do your best to solve the puzzle. In the case of the small freezer, I found that it was running with a low suction pressure. So I went out to my truck and fetched a jug of refrigerant, came back in and charged the unit. The temperature of the suction line came down and the suction pressure came up. And I thought I had it. Which was good, because the place was busy. I couldn’t really test my fix because the line cooks were moving back and forth along the line and using the top of the little freezer as a chopping block. Plus, I couldn’t speak their language very well. And they couldn’t speak mine very well. So I left.

A few days later, I got a callback. Freezer’s still running too warm.

This time, I started by checking the defrost cycle. To do this, you need to get at the front of the freezer. So I had to remove some semi-frozen food until I uncovered the defrost timer. I turned the timer to start a defrost cycle and checked the amperage to my defrost heaters. My heaters were energized, so all that was left was for me to wait and see if the machine came out of defrost. It didn’t. That’s how I came to the conclusion that the defrost timer was no good. So I turned the timer to call for a freeze cycle again, left the job site, and ordered a new defrost timer.

After the part arrived, I returned to the job, unplugged the freezer, and needed to remove the semi-frozen food from the right-hand side of the evaporator panel. Replaced the timer. Easy enough. I didn’t need to block the line for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. I tested the new timer by sending it, once again, through a defrost cycle and waiting for it to come out of it. It did come out of it. And then I left.

A few days later, I was having lunch at the Mexican restaurant when the owner, a large guy with black Fu Manchu, said, “Hey man, uh, I don’t know if you ever came back on that freezer…”

“I came back,” I said. “It was the timer.”

“Uh,” he said, “yeah. It’s still not really working right.”

After lunch, I fetched my tool pouch and returned to the kitchen. By now, the hispanic cooks were shooting me exasperated looks. They were so nice before. Not so much anymore. Fuck it. I didn’t want to do it. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But I had to open those front doors of that freezer. And pull out all the food. All of it. And remove the shelves. And completely remove the evaporator panel. Now the kitchen was in chaos. No freezer. No work surface. And a service guy blocking the entire line. But, again, fuck it. It had to be done. I should’ve done it on the very first call. What I found in there was a solid block of ice. From my truck, I fetched my portable steamer, filled it with water, plugged it in, and started melting the great icecaps.

When you’re faced with something like this, a solid block of ice that covers all the wiring and the fan blade and the drain pan, it’s daunting. It seems like there’s no way of ever getting rid of all that ice. It’s like the ice is inevitable. But nothing is inevitable where machines are concerned. Other than their ultimate stillness. And the scrap heap.

Half frozen meat and vegetables were scattered on different surfaces — atop the freezer, atop the ice machine, inside the refrigerator. At the very bottom of the semi-frozen food was a big, half-frozen sausage. The owner bent down and fetched the giant sausage, inspected it, and threw it across the kitchen onto the floor. The line cook and I exchanged looks and both started laughing. “It mean something,” she said.

Steam was billowing up all around us. It took a good half hour to melt that ice block. What I uncovered beneath all that ice was a plugged drain.

So. Two original problems. Bad timer. Which meant the freezer never defrosted. When I replaced the timer, the coil defrosted, but there was no place for the water to drain. So the ice caps grew and grew again. Starting low and working their way all the way up to the top of the coil.

So I unplugged the drain. Just an innocent little thing like that. Then I put the thing back together. Filled it with produce. And started it. Waited for the temperature to drop to zero degrees Fahrenheit.

I know I can’t charge the customer for all this back and forth. He’d shit his pants. I’ll knock down the time a bit.

What’s my point? How does this relate to personal relationships?

Sometimes, you gotta do the thing you really don’t want to do. You need to face up to it. The sooner the better. Look at it. Think about it. Talk about it. You can’t pretend the thing is working. When it isn’t. Unless, again, you want to be alone. With not even a single customer to keep you company.