Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Heat is Just Not Happening for Me

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Daniel's new home becomes a revolving door for heating technicians as he battles a failed boiler, perpetually cold rooms, and ancient bleeding valves. Plus: the liberating joy of a Slack outage, the special anxiety of 3-4 hour service windows, the disappearance of customer service emails, and Daniel's compulsive basement "maintenance checks".Follow the guys on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social/https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialThanks to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at shopify.com/qqThanks to Factor! Go to FACTORMEALS.com/FACTORPODCAST and use code FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping on your first box.

All I want is more men in my house telling me how things work. This is my favorite thing of homeownership. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? Who do I be? Who do I remember? Words without words Word at all, though Who do we know?

Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question, the show with long answers. I am one half of that podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and I forgot that I had stopped doing this

part so I don't have to come up with things for me anymore. Daniel O'Brien, join as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Buoy. Soren, say hello. Hey everybody, old habits die hard. I'm a writer for American Dad, and I'm a dad myself, and oh, an American! Also, as of last week, I am now a T-ball coach. the resources once reserved for big business. Sign up for $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash QQ, all lowercase. Now I've coached baseball in the past. I don't know if you remember I coached my son's team.

Huge mistake, shouldn't have done it. Your kid, yours Daniel, does not like it when you coach him. No, it's pretty rough. They expect to see you in a particular light and when you are like not, clearly not, I think just generally in life I present that I love him more than everyone else I'm encountering. And when I'm a coach, I'm like, no, you're one of the kids on the team. It's like I'm like critical of him in the same way that I would be critical of anyone else. Now he wouldn't say overly, but he was still like, it was devastating to him. He did not like it. And he was like,

couldn't hang when I would like give him feedback on like what he was, how to like make his game better. Didn't like it. So, uh, I'm not coaching his team anymore. Now I'm coaching my daughters, who is an absolute maniac when it comes to competition. Awesome. I think when my dad coached my basketball team, I was older so that was helpful to have some kind of like understanding. Like T-ball is very young to learn anything but I was in middle or elementary school when my dad was coaching my basketball team and he was so behind the scenes nervous about showing favoritism to me his son that he would

intentionally restrict my minutes I think to to to not present the idea of favoritism or spoiling his kid or anything like that. And I, meanwhile, was already like well enough, well along on my path of self-discovery to know that like sports isn't the thing for me. So when I'm seeing my minutes cut down from one year to the next, I'm like, this is the only smart coach I've ever had. He doesn't care about equity and fairness. He just knows to bench the guy who's not doing anything. He sends me in when he needs a steal

or someone to be like a fucking savage on defense. But otherwise he keeps me on the bench where I belong. And this is some good coaching. Yeah, yeah. I guess I probably didn't let Ronan play. I'll probably, yeah, you're right. The pendulum probably swung too far the other direction where like he had opportunities to play different positions

but I was always like, yeah, but I mean, he's already played infield all last game. Like I'm not gonna, put that kid in right field. But yeah, so Gillie's gonna start playing baseball. I've met some of the other four and five year olds already. And I'm just like thinking, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna teach them? I think I have to teach them everything.

Like I have to teach like, here's where you're gonna run. Here's the next place you're gonna run. Then if you get all the way around these little square rubber things, you get home and that is a score. That's how you score in this game. I don't think they'll know any of that shit. So by the end, maybe they'll understand what baseball is and also just like why it's America's pastime,

why it's such a beautiful game. Sure. Seems pretty boring and bad to me, but that's, do you even actually think that? Do you think it's America's pastime? Do you think it's America's favorite game? Oh no, not anymore. No. Yeah. Football has taken that mantle, but it is still like, it's a very enjoyable game. It's a very enjoyable game for me as an adult. I think that it's, I don't remember this as a kid, but I could sense it in my own children. It's a nightmare for them.

It's so much standing around. And then these moments of like where action is happening and you have to do everything exactly right to even like make a play. And that's like six, you're not just catching a ball, you've gotta be able to feel the ground, know where that ball's gonna go, feel the grounder, pick it up, throw it to the base,

get somebody out and make the right decisions all along the way. And there are like six you have to make. And that's, and then there's more just standing around. It's people yelling at you and then you, more standing around. It's gotta suck. Yeah.

Well, so Ryan, this isn't a sports podcast, you know that. This is a home ownership podcast. A workout podcast. Nope, it's a home ownership podcast again. Unfortunately for some of our listeners, this bachelor recap podcast is pivoting to home ownership. What's up?

I'm gonna do those every other week, and in the meantime, we'll talk about your plumbing issues. By the way, I've got a lot of like, I, people rarely contact me directly about this, about this podcast that we do. But the, after we did the plumbing stuff, like several people reached out and they're like, I, I'm a plumber or I'm a homeowner. And that was just such a joy to listen to. It was so cathartic. Very much, much very much relieved to hear Daniel's problems and I was like oh okay well you picked the right podcast miraculously you laid it on this plumbing podcast this this one is is the it's gonna be mostly about heat because that's been the big albatross of this house that I can't

remember how much I talked about it before about the house. You said that your furnace doesn't work and you guys don't have. Yeah, we didn't have heat. And it's this house was built. Let me check my records. I want to make sure this house was built first. Correct.

It was the first house ever built. And they've made very few improvements since then and the the the Furnace our boiler went out very quickly into our time here We had different folks come to try to repair it And of course they eventually convinced us that this is this is irreparable and you need a new furnace which Is not great, but it's kind of great because a new furnace comes with new warranties and also like an understanding of how things work because this was such an old house and the

furnace was sort of built piece at a time and the house has changed ownership the positives that we were seeing was like well this is new we have great peace of mind that the furnace is new and it's not gonna explode and they're going to, it's a high efficiency, I keep saying furnace and boiler interchangeably because I'm stupid. But we're gonna get this new thing in that's gonna keep us all warm and that's gonna be great. It's gonna feel good for us to have it

and we can contact the company that did the installation if anything else goes wrong and brother have they been back several times already because things continue to go wrong. I have some questions for you right after that. This is not an HVAC system right? It is not your heating system is not also your air conditioner. Not completely separate. So the good thing about moving into a house in January as we did is we have months until we even find out that the air conditioning doesn't work. So that's- Right, that's pretty sad. That's someone else's problem. That's future Daniel's problem. For all I know, he'll be dead. And so we won't even have to talk about it on the podcast because the podcast will be I

Don't know an AI recreation of my voice talking to you about Very similar problems, but without that certain Unlikable element that I bring to it So, okay, I have one more question before you really get into the nuts and bolts of this. When you're dealing with all this, did you discover that you have asbestos piping coming from your boiler? No.

Oh, that's great. That's great news. Yeah. Okay. Because that's pretty, on a house that was built first, that's pretty, pretty common because they, you know, that's, it common because they use it because it was not flammable. So like you'd have these vents for all of the monoxide

that's being created from the fire that's heating your entire house that runs to your roof. And that would frequently, that pipe that goes all through your entire house would be asbestos. And then you're just like, you're fucked. Now, Soren, we're buddies, we're old friends. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you there's not asbestos and then you're just like, you're fucked. Now, Soren, we're buddies, we're old friends. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you there's not asbestos in the house.

We got asbestos in the house. We got asbestos in our drinking water, I'm sure. It's just not in the pipes for our boiler furnace thing. Here's a little something about me. I used to do plays when I was younger. I was a theater kid and the thing about being a theater kid is that when you're on stage, you are the star. And after the play, everybody thinks you did it all.

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Shopify.com slash QQ. But they fixed it, which was nice. And we have these old, like tanky radiators in most of our rooms producing the heat. They're really cool looking. They're very old. We love them. There are two rooms in the house that have baseboard radiators that are different from the sort of like curvy ones that you're you're you're thinking of when you think of old radiators these are the ones that pop and click and when you turn them on they get hot they're down by the floor they go yeah like sure like yeah all the hate

needs to rattle around against all the stuff that's in there. You know? So the baseboards in a guest bathroom and a guest bedroom, they were not getting warm. So we had to call the company back a few days later and we're like, great job with the heat. Couple things, these two aren't working. Could you please come and address this? And they came and they fixed one of them and then the other one they said this one is working too. It's just going to take a while. I'm going to go

now and they left and then that heat never came on and it's it's hard to explain that I'm already at my wits end at this point but I am because to rewind a little bit, the first time the heat broke we called a guy and the guy fixed the heat and then the heat broke again several hours later. We waited a few days because this particular guy didn't work on the weekends, must be nice. We called him back Monday, comes back to the house, he says what's the problem? We said you fixed it, it doesn't work anymore, We gave you money. Isn't this fun? He worked on it a little bit longer and then he said I can't fix this you need someone else and we're like what like your dad. What do you mean? He's like no, I called my dad. He can't do it either

I showed him you need like a whole different Better company and so he left so we had a whole different better company come in and that was the first guy who showed us a bunch of pictures of the inside of the machine and was like, I can maybe fix this one piece at a time, but you need a whole new system. Oh my God. Fuck, okay.

How much is a new system gonna cost? And Sorin, I don't know if you know this or if our listeners know this, but he doesn't decide how much the new thing costs. He says, well, a sales rep needs to come here and look at it and count the radiators and he will tell you how much it costs. I'm just a tech. I don't do that. So we're like, I need another better guy. We're like, okay, fine. So we sent him away. And then the other guy comes a few hours later and he says, what's the problem? And we explained to him the problem again. We show him where all the stuff is and he goes through everything and then he stands in our kitchen and

talks to us for a while and he says all right this is how much we think it will cost to replace this thing here's all of our warranties all of our blah blah blah blah we're like okay that's a lot of money we were going to ask for a second opinion from somebody else so we get another guy to come out to our house Go watch the problem go into the basement. We explained the problem. They go through our house They count the radiators. They stand in our kitchen. They talked to us for a while They go through their numbers and they say here is our number and it's lower than the first guy's number So we're like we like this number better and we're googling as all this is happening So we know these guys are selling the exact same boiler one of them is cheaper so we're gonna go

with the cheaper one because the other one also had a reputation for being exorbitantly expensive okay so the sales rep signs our paperwork then he leaves a few days later new technicians come because they're the ones who are doing the install they come in they say what's going on We explain what's going on. We show Everything is and I I feel I need to point out that I work from home So this is all happening during like my work concentration days and hours. They spent two days fixing this thing So by the time this other guy comes out to then walk in, a brand new tech from the same company,

say, what's the problem? And I say, just come into my kitchen. We had you guys come out to fix the boiler. What was wrong with the boiler? Great question, it didn't work. We had multiple guys, they couldn't fix it. So your guys came and replaced the whole thing and the heat was working and it was great.

There are two rooms where it's not working. Please, can you fix it in one of these two rooms? And the guy's like, sure. He does his thing. He leaves. One of the rooms is still not working even though he said, just give it time. That's why at this point, when I call the company back, I finally say, hey, it's me again. You know, I'm sure something lights up on the phone when my number calls that everyone's like, oh fuck, it's this guy. It's this guy who we've been to his house four times in one week. He's calling again. I was like, Hey, I just want you to know, here's the entire story. Furnace broke. Guys came fixed it. Things weren't working still, even though they said it was working. Second guy came out. He looked at it.

He said it was fixed. He left. The paperwork he looked at it, he said it was fixed, he left. The paperwork said the job was done. The job is not done. The heat is still not working in this one room. And they're like, okay, we can see who's around today. And I said, no, I don't want anyone else to come into my house anymore. And they're like, I don't understand. And I said, I can live with the heat not working in that room. I just wanted you to know. I wanted you to know that it didn't work anymore

at all at all. And it never worked. And, and, and I'm okay with it, but like if next winter rolls around and we have other guests and it's cold still then in the future I want to make sure that there's a note of it in your report on our house somewhere that it's your fault And you didn't fix it because later when I've calmed down Call you again, and I'll need heat and I would just like it for your records." And they were like, I don't understand. Why don't you just have someone come back? It's like, because I need to get my fucking job done. I need to work and I have a few hours to myself without having some other man

come into the house and stand in my kitchen and ask me what the problem is. And then shake his head. I, but I still want this on record that it doesn't work. And they're just like, okay, I'll make a note of that here. And I'm sure on their end, it's just someone like writing on a Post-it note. And then throwing it away, yeah. Daniel O'Brien address, heat broken, really unhinged.

Does not want us to come back. Seems like a workable solution for all parties. really unhinged, does not want us to come back. Seems like a workable solution for all parties. And then later, of course, I spoke to my wife and she was like, I will, she's very sweet. You're like, you were really great. You dealt with all the hating people. Every time someone came in, you talked to them,

you showed them around, you stood with them while they repaired things. I will do this. I will make sure it's on a day when you're not home on Mondays. I have volunteer work. You will be at your volunteer work and I will deal with the people. They will come in. That person came on Monday while I was at volunteer work and they worked on the same

guy who tried to fix it the last time, tried to fix it again. And then left with his report saying, all right, I fixed it this time and it's definitely getting warm. And Sorin, it's still not. It's just not. It doesn't work at all. Even have time to be mad about that because that got done that got done on Monday and then on Tuesday I noticed that our two radiators in the basement were leaking from the bleeding valves Do you know what the bleeding valves are on these old radiators? No, sometimes when Air builds up in these old radiators You need to let that air out because water flows through the radiators

to produce the heat and the air can't be there. So you can take a key or in some cases, a flathead screwdriver to open up the side of the radiator and bleed the water out. When the water starts flowing, then you stop and that gets the air out and then you can run your heat again. These bleed valves, because they were the second

and third bleed valves ever created, they're past their time. So they're leaking drops of water into the basement. I noticed this on Tuesday, I think completely unrelated to the other heating work that was going on. And I could have just collected this water in little cups, but I also know that you can't have moisture in the basement You can't have leaks in your house. And so I called the same company. Hello me again

This isn't about the heat upstairs. That's further records still not working this is about a different thing and I was just wondering if I could get a technician on the phone, if he or he can talk me through this, if this is something I can do, then talk to me and let me do it. Or if it's not or if it's something that will go away in a couple of days, because it's normal, that's fine too. But this is not how the system works. They say, okay, we can have a guy out there in a couple hours.

And they came and this is resolved now. They had to replace the bleeding valves because they were the oldest bleeding valves of all time and they replaced another thing. And then they talked to me for a while about how bleeding valves work. And like, this is great. All I want is more men in my house telling me how things work. This is my favorite thing of home ownership. I'm having a good time.

And the other thing that came up in this conversation, they're like, so this is, so you're saying this wasn't these leaks, because these are old machines saying this wasn't happening before. It was like, no, this started Tuesday. And they were like, how did you was like, no, this started Tuesday. And they were like, how did you? How did you know this started Tuesday? It was like, well, Tuesday is when I noticed the water and they're wondering how I noticed the water.

And our listeners might be noticing that, too. Little water spots, spots down in the basement in these very specific places. And it's difficult to admit, oh, why? It's because I was in the basement staring at the floor, wandering around looking for problems. And I'm glad they didn't ask, oh, you've been a homeowner for a month. Was this part of your monthly maintenance check

that is recommended going into the basement looking for leaks as part of your monthly maintenance check that is recommended going into the basement looking for leaks as part of your due diligence as a homeowner. I'm glad they didn't ask that because then I would have said no, the monthly maintenance check where I went into the basement looking for leaks was Saturday. This was days later when I was doing it again for no reason because I'm, I don't want to be accused of stolen valor of, I don't want to say I necessarily have OCD. I just have a strong belief that there are lots of things that I need to check belief that there are lots of things that I need to check somewhat regularly because if I don't something bad will happen. Well you were right by the way. I

was right. That's great. It's terrible news. I just happened to be skulking about in the basement that I just checked a few days ago for the specific thing and I was like, ah, leaks. Good thing I caught them here Tuesday morning. On my third try through, yeah. Yeah. I knew this was worth it. Oh my God, all right.

Okay, let me ask you an honest question quickly. What are you having for dinner tonight? Oh, did that question just fill you with anxiety? Did you think, oh man, we haven't planned it. I don't know. Generally when I eat, the kids aren't gonna eat the same thing as me and now I gotta think about what to make.

And if I'm thinking about tonight, then I gotta start thinking about the rest of the week because if we're hitting the grocery store, we gotta do it all in one fell swoop. I know that feeling. Well, guess what? What if you could take the pain away from thinking about all of those meals?

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and they're fixing the bleeding valves. She was like, did you ask them about the upstairs unit? And I just said no. And I think it's going to be no for a while. I think this is truly next year's problem. And they might come back next year and be like, this, this is a new issue to us. We are, we need to completely replace this thing and it's your fault. Maybe I will have either have achieved peace and I will be okay with that or maybe I will have grown a spine and I will not be okay with that and I will direct their attention to this very podcast and our long string of emails and phone calls and say no sir you

are paying for this, you are fixing this, this is your problem, I have documentation. Which of those seems likely to you, Soren? Because option three is I stay the way I am and I pay that money. Yeah, you're gonna live with this. Yeah.

So I like that you gave me the context of the fact that you're writing from home because I don't know if that translates to everybody else, but in the writing process, like getting in and out of it is like steering a giant ship. It's like, you don't just turn, you're like, and now I'm writing.

Like, you don't know how it works. You're like, you have some little things that you can do for yourself to get you in the right zone, but you've got to do that every single time you hop back out of it. And so, when I'm writing, if my wife is like, can I talk to you for a second, I'm the biggest asshole in the world

because I'm so mad that I got thrown from it. It's like waking up. It's like, now I gotta go all the way back to sleep. Like, this is not, you don't understand how big of a deal this is. And so like, I'm just, I'm a dickhead. I'm a dickhead when I'm interrupted from writing for anything. And the fact that you were interrupted every single day to then go tell this story again and again, I can't, I, they, you should be celebrated as a hero for not killing someone. Thank you.

The casual interruptions when you're working on something and your wife or someone knocking at the door steals your attention, that can be frustrating. But even the planned interruptions are difficult. And like the planned interruptions with any kind of home maintenance work is a three to four hour window of time where they might show up.

And that's basically our math listeners might not understand this, but if there is 30 minutes of work that is required of a technician that could happen within a four hour window. That's four hours of work that's not happening for me because I didn't get into the writing REM state. I didn't get into the flow state. So when I am like starting a day knowing that, oh, I have a meeting at noon, I have a podcast at four, and I have another item on that to-do list at any other time, that day is gone. That day is just not a day that writing is gonna happen

because like you said, you need like to ramp into it and to ramp out of it. And if you're just gonna have these planned interruptions, it's just, there's just no going. And there's a certain amount of things that I can do for my job that aren't writing that I can get done. But if it gets to that like, well, it's between 12 and four. So that means they're gonna show up anytime.

Then it's like, this is just like a fucking dog shit wasted day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, in fact, even when it's completely scheduled today, I had, I had time before this podcast to work on my episode, which is due very soon.

And I was like, you know what? I've got an hour, and this is like, not even like pure writing, this is editing. And even then, like you're in a state where you're just like flowing. And I was so, I came to this podcast hot because I was like, what the fuck? Why do we schedule it for right now?

Like mad. And had to really calm myself down. I'd be like, it's not any, it's not, they have no idea. You have to just calm down. I think I'd be in a much even more stressed place right now. But the day we're recording this, February 26th, there was possibly national, possibly global slack outage today. Slack is a very popular office communication software that we use to, we have different slack channels at work where we like sometimes we bullshit. We have a different slack channel for every story that the show does and different channels

for like updates. It is truly where all of the communication in my job takes place. And it was down today. And there was a couple like staff-wide emails that was like, hey, it's down. So we created this like Google space for people to talk if they want to. And also monitor your emails for important things.

And the lack of Slack interruptions was so nice. It was so, it was almost like I was, I still had a read through today that of course I attended and gave notes on. But as far as like the minute to minute work Slack things that come into varying degrees of importance, it was really like, oh, thank God. We can cross work off the list today because none of us can function without Slack. So I guess it's just a free day.

Now, if there is one silver lining as a writer to the experience that you've had, I think it's that telling that same story over and over again really helps you trim the fat of a narrative. And also the stuff that you get rid of and turn out to be valuable information that then you gotta plug back into the story.

You're retelling it over and over again, figuring out from your audience, is this too long winded, am I not getting the point across? Oh, that's confusing, I see, I've told that a couple times and they always get confused at that spot. Now I'm gonna massage that area a little bit. It makes you so good. What I'm telling it to you for the purposes of this podcast,

one of the points of the story is to hit just how many different little guys came in here. What I tell this later for different reasons, I'm going to combine a couple of those characters. We don't need two different techs and a sales guy. We don't need all those characters. Yeah. I mean, but it really does drive the point home. I've dealt with contractors all the time. And you remember when I had a hole in the side of my house for a year and a half.

And I was just on the phone all the time with people being like, you don't understand, there's a hole in my house. And then being like, yeah, no, we get that. We apologize for that. No, no, no, there was never that even. There was never like, hey, this is our fault even. Yeah. There was just like, we understand.

We understand the situation. And I was so mad and frustrated. And every time that I've ever had contractors, that has been the scenario. Unless you find like one person where you're like, oh, I will go back to this person the rest of my life. And right now we have an electrician like that, and we have a painter like that.

And we're like, these these are if these guys die I'm fucked. Yeah We've run the gamut now where we started out with the guy that was like this is a guy This is a local guy and we like him. We like the way he talks to us and He's got like a family-run business. And we think that's good and fair. This is the guy who could not get the job done because he didn't have the tools and wasn't sophisticated enough.

And this is the guy who doesn't work on weekends. And also, if you call their office, they're like, if you're calling after 4 o'clock Monday to Friday, we will answer your call at the next business day. Because that's how small this literal mom and pop operation is. So we went to the other end of the spectrum, the company that has just like various HVAC guys that I guess are just like roving around all the time for the person that you call, the dispatcher, to just say, let me see who is available,

and I'll just put out an APB to my HVAC guys and see who you get today. That is the more sophisticated commercialized venture. There are flaws with both. Obviously, the hours of the first one were not great, but this second one, where I've never spoken to the same person twice is also its own different hell.

And like, when I talk to the dispatcher, they, to your point, they're not gonna say, we're very sorry there's a hole in your wall. They're just like, not only can I not offer you any advice on how to fix your thing, I don't know shit.

All my, everyone who works here is so specialized in their own things. And my thing is answering the phone and like monitoring the schedule. I am such a master of monitoring the schedule, but I've never used heat. So I can't even relate to your problem. Yeah, that is deeply frustrating.

And a lot of times you're right, you just wanna talk to somebody on the phone and be like, hey, what's this thing? I've found, and I'm sure this is the same thing your dad ran into and why he had the camera for the sewer line and everything and why he did so many things by himself at home, is that you play this game six or seven times with them

and then eventually you're just like, you know what? I'm gonna do it. And if it's fucked up, I'll live with the consequences because at least it's fucked up because I did it and not because there's like four different gentlemen have been in my house doing it wrong. And you'd be surprised at how many of those times you're like, oh, you know what?

I could do this, I can do this. It's because, and I mean, not to disparage anyone who's got like a real trade and like what they're good at and everything. A lot of it is just knowledge. It's just like knowing the stuff enough. And so if you're willing to commit to, okay, I'm gonna take five hours

and I'm gonna learn how this machine works. A lot of times you can solve the problem on your own. And when you can't, I mean, even when you try and like, you get to a point where you're like overwhelmed, where you just bit off more than you could chew, you invite somebody in and you're like, hey, I fucked up, I'm gonna see a lot of you guys,

but they are all like, yeah, okay, I get it. I get why you did this. So everybody understands the game. And every time they replace something in this house, I'm getting closer to understanding how to fix things better. A, because I'm standing over shoulders and asking all of my stupid questions. Oh man, they love that.

And B, before I call the guys and I am Googling around like bleeding valve on radiator, leaking water, how to fix. I'm Googling that first to see if I could do something. And every article and video that comes out where they're like, yes, this is a hundred percent something that you could take care of on your own. And then they cut to it and just like, oh, that's not what mine looks like, brother.

No one has mine anymore. But now they replaced my bleeding valve with one that looks like the ones in the pictures and the videos. Oh, that's great. So I'm getting closer. Yeah, that's nice. I'll be able to do this.

That's really nice. Yeah, but also it's very funny, Soren, that you mentioned you wanna get someone on the phone. Because this is a problem that, I mean, I'm very close to being like old guy shakes fist at cloud level of like disgruntled. But I'm the whatever happened at some point in the customer service world that has decentralized customer service lines for companies, so that it's a person who's completely detached from the actual business or replace customer service

entirely with chat bots and AI, it's all very bad. It's all incredibly frustrating. Sometimes you wanna get someone on the phone or sometimes as was my case with Home Depot, a company that for all intents and purposes I think is a good one as far as- No, no, they're trash. No?

Yeah, they're trash. Okay, great. Home Depot is really bad yeah I had like a famously good owner who maybe died no recently but he was good for a while to his employees no he's bad big back big Trump backer oh okay I haven't wrong yeah yeah but anyway that was a company that sometimes you want to get someone on the phone sometimes as it's my case and I had a big problem with their delivery of our washer and dryer I wanted to write an email because writing is my trait and I had a lot of thoughts that I wanted to get organized and I wanted on the record I wanted their

corporate to see all of it and I wanted on the record I wanted their corporate to see all of it and I wanted to have like the timeline of everything that went wrong laid out very clearly and plainly for anyone to see because it wasn't just that a thing was done wrong a thing was done wrong and then attempts to rectify it were disastrous and unsatisfying and there are still issues that are unresolved even today. It's been almost a month. The thing about Home Depot, some of our listeners might be ahead of this. You cannot email them with a problem.

They have a phone, which I didn't want to because I wanted to organize my thoughts in text. They have chat bots, which are dog shit. They have chat people, which is also difficult. And they have a forum on their website where you can submit customer complaints. But that limits your characters. And I had a lot to say. And I'm sure I sound like a Karen with all of my complaints with work and I might be,

I don't know. But in my mind, I'm the victim here and you signed up for my podcast, so you have to agree with me. That's binding. And I was even talking to like one of the real person on chat and I was like, hey, this is gonna sound crazy, but like I just wanna email Home Depot customer care like broadly, just their overarching corporate customer service because I want as many people

to see this as possible because my frustration is great and it would be lessened if we got some extra attention and maybe some of the money back that we spent on this disastrous project and they're like. Yeah we don't we don't have an email address that you can send to it I felt like no I mean but but you do know we don't that we got rid of that in 2018. It was like, how can you do that? How can the business do that? But Home Depot did. People are listening right now who don't know. They're like, I'm just going to Google this, and I'm going to skeet him on Blue Sky. I'm going to comment, or I'm going to send it, customerscare or customersupport at homedepot.com

and brothers and sisters and otherwise, I'm telling you that email address will bounce back. It doesn't work anymore. You can't find it because they don't have it because at some point down the line, Home Depot decided, well, we're not gonna, we don't want big long customer complaints and we don't wanna hire someone to monitor them them so we're just not gonna have it. People can deal with a

robot, they could deal with a person in a chat center somewhere in the world or they could deal with a person on the phone in a call center somewhere in the world and that's it. Those are their options. They will not be able to connect anyone and Home Depot is so decentralized now that like the people who did the installation of our washer and dryer, they don't even work for Home Depot either. They are independent contractors.

A team that Home Depot has very little control over. There's like, we dispatch one of our teams. We say who's available and we dispatch someone to a location, and then they're in the fucking wind. They're gone, you can't find them anymore. And Home Depot's like, yeah, we don't, I mean, at this point, we might not technically

have employees, we might, like every other business, just be like a vast network of gig economy people struggling to stay afloat. It's, so first of all, like a Lowe's and a Home Depot in general, it's so decentralized that even the people that work there don't know, they don't know shit for the most part. They, you've got the slogan of Lowe's

is let's build something together. That's fucking horse shit. They don't, you go to a Lowe's and here's what you want. You want to find the oldest guy there because sometimes there are people there who know their shit and it's surprising almost and now because you're like shocked that they do. There's a guy at the paint section of our Home Depot and I'm like I know that that guy knows everything and so even if I don't have a paint question I'm going to him. And everybody else doesn't know a thing and my son and I for his project that he was recently

working on we needed that purple polystyrene, which is like a very specific type of styrofoam for installation. And I went there and I was like, you have sheets of polystyrene? And they were like, no. I was like, ah, see, I feel like you do. I'm looking for the, it's a purple,

it's a purple styrofoam. And they're like, spray? And I was like, no, no, listen to the words that are coming out of this one, out of my mouth. And then I went to like three different people there, all of them were like, I don't think we have that. We don't carry that. I start wandering through the store and I fucking find it.

Of course I find it. And my son, we walk out the store and my son goes, some of those people that work there didn't know the store very well. And I was like, buddy, you've got no idea. You don't know how many times I've done this dance. How many times I've had an irrigation leak or I've had something wrong and like,

I try to get some, just I'm so lonely. I'm so lonely in those moments and I want someone to commiserate or at least know what I'm talking about. And then you never will get that from a place like Home Depot or Lowe's. All of this we should be clear. These are symptoms of late-stage capitalism not to not to get on a horse or a soapbox about this or anything like that, but

undoubtedly the reasons that things like this are happening in a physical Home Depot is because maybe Home Depot decided they Would save money if they weren't training their workers better or weren't paying for more skilled workers Yeah, so I think that's lose some expertise You also get a lot of employees who come to Home Depot because they're hiring, even if this person might not necessarily be a great for Home Depot, that's the job they take because their previous industry was bought by a hedge fund and liquidated completely. And so now they're starting from scratch at Home Depot. We don't blame the workers.

No. We always blame the companies and the larger machinations of hedge fund and Wall Street ghouls who are very quickly destroying. I feel like it takes a little bit of the venom out of what I'm saying by saying they're destroying everything. I sound like an unserious person when I say that capitalist ghouls are destroying everything. It seems like I haven't done my research, but I have, and I'm pretty sure they are. Yeah. I do sound like an asshole. And I am. Let me be very clear. I am. I've been through

this so many times that I'm frustrated and saddened by it. But you're right. And this is frequently how the conversation goes when I'm on the phone with customer service for like the second hour or whatever. It's always the same. It's, hey, you're going to find that I'm pretty upset. This is not your fault. And I know that.

But here's the issue that I'm having. And I'm sorry that I sound like this and I sound very contentious. It's just that here's exactly what's happened. Yeah. And it's tough. My heart also breaks for the people in call centers who are in a thankless job, probably not of their choosing, but circumstances force them into this job. And I call them and I say, you're not listening to me.

I'm very frustrated right now. And I'm standing in two inches of water in my basement because the delivery didn't work correctly. And they are flipping through a book of how to deal with difficult customers. And so they say, oh, Mr. O'Brien, I'm very sorry to hear that you are standing in two inches of water. I feel terrible about that. Let me put you on a brief hold. I'm like, no! I'm sure the guidebook said copy and paste the thing that he's upset about and repeat it back to him to prove that you are listening. But even this transaction,

like the fact that you're doing that is also one of the frustrating things now. I had a roof leak. I think I talked about it on here. I discovered that from my move in, that every single vent that went through my roof, which is lots, every bathroom that you have, your kitchen, like all of that has vents to the roof.

And in every single circumstance, it was not sealed at the roof. So water was just like coming in through that area. And I could wrap a towel around the pipe and catch the water that was running down it. But that's annoying to get up into your attic and wrap, then change these towels out when it rains hard because they're sopping wet.

So I was like, I found a roof guy and I called him and I was like, here's the problem I'm having and he's like, oh, it's when it rains in LA, I get I'm booked up for seven months. Like that's just everybody has these problems and no one discovers them until it rains. Yeah. And he's like, just tell me the problem. So I start explaining it to him and he's like, okay, here's what you're going to do. You're going to go get this stuff called Henry. It's this black sealant You're gonna get one of these putty knives and you're gonna go up on the roof And if you just seal these places with that and you feather it

any means is like you as you're putting the putty on you use that putty knife to like Spread it out evenly so that as it's going away from them the main joint It's just feathers on the pipe, it gets thinner and thinner. And he's explaining it to me. And he's like, you probably can solve this problem on your own in half an hour. And I was like, I wanna, can I just pay you? You don't know how valuable this has been to me.

You just told me how to solve this problem. And you were like, it wasn't a YouTube video, or it was impersonal or anything, it was like, you knew the problem, I explained it to you, you then went to me and you're like, dude, I got a solution for you. Here's how you do it. And I was like, this is the service.

How do we get this every single time? I wanna just let me pay you and maybe you'll do this again. Yeah. The guys who came today, possibly because my phone number sets off alarms in the building. Guess they've been here so many times. Before they left, they're like, has anyone told you how to bleed these?

I said, no, no one's told me anything. He's like, okay. And he told me how to do it. And it was a simple process that I'm very happy to understand now. And I was like, how often should I have to do this? He was like, ideally never, but now you know. I was like, yeah often should I have to do this? He was like, ideally never, but now you know. I was like, yeah.

All right, man. Get out of my fucking house, please. That's, oh man, when they impart the knowledge on you, it's great. And I was like you, when I first became a homeowner, when they're like installing a new clean out for me and I'm like hanging over their shoulder being like, so if I need to do this again, how do I do it?

And they're so polite, but man, is that the worst part of their job is somebody just being like, I wanna understand. I don't know that it's the worst part of their job because what I've found in any of these techs who have come over in any, in my whole life is that they love explaining to you how things work.

Like- Well, they like telling you how yours is fucked. How like someone who ever did it first fucked it up. Yeah. Like I can say like, hey, there's no heat coming out of here. And they're like, so what a furnace does, right? So what it does is it heats the water and water goes through the pipes.

And this is your gas valve. And this thing, like, oh, okay. I had the same thing in an old apartment when the dishwasher broke. And I had a guy come out to work on it and he was like, that's not a complicated machine. Water comes in here, it spins around in this box, it comes up through these things,

and it comes through here. and then it drains out of here And I was like, what did you not have a son or something? What the fuck? Yeah, tell us to your kid I wish that I would have been told all those things I think back on that and I'm like, well because I think you're just more in the way when you're kids And so yeah My dad was not and my you're already pissed off when you're fixing the thing and then to have your kid there, too Who's like asking a bunch of questions? I've really tried to get Ronan involved because he's older. Yeah, not because he's a boy

Let me just be clear fucking feminists of the year Trophy get it out Fucking feminist of the year. Get the, where's the trophy? Get it out. I try to get him involved, even when I know that the project is going to take longer because I'm like, you, somebody's, you have to know these things.

Like it's so valuable to have this information and I didn't have it. And I'm, whenever I am faced with a problem, I have a small heart attack because I'm starting from scratch in a thing I don't understand at all and now I've gotta research it and now I've gotta figure it out and diagnose it and I'm gonna diagnose wrong a lot because I'm not good at this yet.

I don't know the terminology even. I'm certain, A, I wish I would have had the wherewithal to ask questions and B, behind my dad's shoulder while he was doing things so I would have a better knowledge today. But B, I'm also certain that he would like that idea in theory and would hate it in practice too. Because he would be trying to figure out what was wrong with a car and this little 12 year old asshole, me, would be like, is out what was wrong with a car and this little 12 year old asshole me would be like Is it maybe that tube over there that tube looks funky to me because I you know, I would want to solve things

but I don't know anything but that wouldn't stop me because I was confident and I'm sure at that point. Hey, we should be like it might be that fucking tube. I don't know It might be that fucking tube. I don't know. I hope it's not now though, because you said it. I don't know why I'm in bitter tea when I don't like you right now. Yeah, they just be quiet and watch. It's all fucked, man.

It's so, home ownership is such a chore. I think at every turn. My solution, which is not applicable to everyone, it's not even really applicable to me at this juncture, is that there is a non-chain local, local, local hardware store in my town that is staffed by, I think, the one and only guy forever, and he knows everything.

Like a kind of guy where I've gone to before, where I will like hold up a bolt, and he knows what the thread is by looking at it, so he knows what size, whatever, I need to match it. Those guys are a treasure. They're such a godsend. The Jaspers and Howards of the world run their own hardware shops they are Of course more expensive than Home Depot's and Lowe's that's why I can't go to them with all of my things right now

It's because their expertise has value and I I just put all of my money into a frozen wet house. So I can't splurge on bleeding valves at the moment. I'm going to give you a recommendation here, Dave. Oh, man. I thought that sentence was going to end with money. There's a... This is going to be only cathartic for you. It's not gonna even help you with your home stuff. It's only somebody who you can commiserate by watching.

Have you heard of a comedian named Derek Cahill? No. He's on, you gotta find him probably on TikTok, but he does this thing called Fuck This House, where he bought a house that is in terrible shape He's got a family and like he's got kids from like age 16 to 6 so like he's been he's also like a parent to and and

Everything goes wrong with this house. Like he opens up floorboards and there's like ants in there. There's like a whole whole kingdom It's in there and he And he's got a pool there and the pool's always fucking broken. And it's just every time he comes on, he's got that same energy that you have every time you're trying to fix something. He's like, hey, welcome back to another episode

of Fuck This House. Here's what's going on right now. And you get to watch him deal with this thing and he's not good at fixing things because he's learning too. And as he's fixing, he's like, is it better? I don't know, more of a lateral movement really. It's got a different new problems,

but the thing that I had before, that's pretty much fixed. Because it's still winter, we haven't even gotten to the part of this journey where it's full of ants. I know it's coming. Yeah, you got to get that second thing. I've been watching the movie. I'm getting ants in the porch. Oh man, yeah, you need your first full four seasons

in a house before you're like, okay, I think I know all the things for now. And the ants are gonna wait until I get my dream porch where I could sit with my coffee in the morning and work in the sunshine peacefully. That's when the ants are gonna show up to make me paranoid about having coffee out there. Not even those, dude. You're gonna have, you've got a front porch.

You're gonna have cluster flies. You're gonna have those flies that just hover in one spot and they love the shade. And so they live there now. And you wanna go out and use your porch. And it's like, no, the flies live there. That's, they love that shadowy area. They like it for the same reason I do.

It's shady. Yeah. Well. Well, I guess that's the podcast. Yeah, but check him out. Derek Cahill, fuck this house. I will check out Derek Cahill. I'll add it to the list of things that I check in addition to the floors of the basement and corners where ants might show up and the lug nuts on my tire because one time my tire fell off, but that doesn't mean I stopped checking today. I was there for that.

Yep. It was my birthday. Yeah. Yeah. All right, thank you everybody for listening. This has been Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. If you like our theme song, that's by Merex. You can find their music anywhere you stream or you can go to merex.bandcamp.com for full albums. We are produced, engineered, and held together in every capacity by Gabe Harder. He also puts together a lot of really funny clips

from these episodes and we'll put them up on Instagram, I think maybe even TikTok. And it's actually enjoyable for me to watch. I remember, like I have no memory of these after I do them and then when I watch those, I'm like, oh, this is a pretty good podcast. I like this, I'm like, oh, this is a pretty good podcast. I like this, I enjoy this. You can also find full versions of this in video format.

If you want to go to YouTube, you can find, look for a quick question with Soren and Daniel there. And if you want another version of this podcast, a version that no one else hears, unless they pay the big bucks, you can find us on Patreon. You can get extra, every other week we do a more unbuttoned

version of this podcast. That's where, of guest calling after dark, because that's what we keep saying at the beginning of it. You can also do that through Apple subscriptions as well. And... Good catch. That'll be it. Yeah.

All right, bye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? How did you get? What do I be? What's it out there?

I've got a weird number. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? How did you get? Where will I be remembered? Words without words Worded on the Guideway's on Oh forget it

I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here