DEA/IRS/US NAVY War Stories

Well I'll give you coal delivery "war story"... Some customers tend to wait to the last minute. Usually the fall is the worse obviously but one problem with the fall is that its generally wet so going across lawns can be hassle. You get a few days here and there so you usually save all the lawns for those days. Anyhow the one fall about 3-4 years back I had one customer with a fairly new house so the lawn was still very soft under any circumstances. That particualar fall was very wet, He called me about the end of September and it was getting into about November and I still didn't deliver his coal. Simply never stopped raining enough, even on good level lawns I was getting stuck that year. His house sat on incline, if you came in the driveway you could veer off the driveway down a short slope, dump the coal off and then proceed around the entire lenghtof the house and come out on bottom lawn that led to the end of the driveway on the other side of the house. Overall it was probably about 100 foot length of lawn and a 25 foot drop from start to finish. In any event since its all down hill the chances of getting stuck are pretty slim.

He's understandably getting nervous and calling me almost every other day at this point but I keep explaining to him the problem. Even after week the ground simply doesn't have enough time to dry out. Apparently he thinks I'm giving him the run around and just don't want to deliver etc, actually quite contrary to the fact as it was full load and easy delivery other than the lawn. Anyhow we get a week and it doesn't rain, he calls up insisting that I bring it. I warn him what's going to happen because although it hasn't rained the ground is still saturated but he thinks I'm full of *censored*... I suggest waiting a week or two until we get good overnight freeze so we cam minmize the damage to the lawn, at that point it was almost December. He was only using it for supplementary heat anyway. Still insist's I bring it.

Anyhow the moral of the story is if you don't want a giant 100 foot number 11 that is 1 foot deep around the entire perimeter of your house don't call the coalman when its raining.