7:00 A.M.        Joe sips on his first cup of coffee for the day. He’s happy he has the kind of job where he isn’t trapped in an office all day.

7:30 A.M         He checks his BlackBerry to see what kind of calls he has scheduled for today.

7:45 A.M         Joe leaves the house driving his work truck, because he drives it home after work every evening. Joe really likes this arrangement since this keeps the miles off of his pride and joy, his new Dodge Challenger, the good one with the SRT 6.1-Liter HEMI. Since he doesn’t need to drive his car to work, high gas prices really aren’t much of a problem for him.

8:00 A.M         The first call of the day is an elderly lady named Mary. She has a problem with her home air conditioning unit. Joe figures it out pretty quickly thanks to the training he had not too long ago in school. After repairing the problem and giving the system a tune up, Joe leaves a grateful customer who was really worried, moments before Joe got there, that she would need to replace the whole Air Conditioning system.

9:00 A.M         Second Call of the day. There is a Restaurant in town that is one of Joe’s regular clients. Their ice machine needs service. There is a cute new waitress that takes quite a lot of time talking to you while to do your work, good thing you are single, maybe she would like to go to an Angel game next week. Joe finds out that her name is Karen.

10:00 A.M       Third call of the day an emergency call! Joe sees a new call coming in on the BlackBerry. A homeless shelter in Fullerton is having problems with their walk-in freezer. This is the type of emergency that calls for a highly trained technician, thousands of dollars in food could go bad if it isn’t fixed now! Joe remembers how frightening this job was the first time he ran into this kind of a problem. Now only a short time after he started working in the field, this is just routine; no big deal.

11:15 A.M       Fourth call – periodic maintenance. Now Joe is stopping in for a quick periodic maintenance call at a small law firm In Costa Mesa. Joe feels good that by keeping the Air Conditioning equipment working at peak efficiency, he not only helps his customers save money, he is also helping the environment, oh and that really friendly girl – just in time he remembers her name is Christina - in the front of the office looks particularly nice this morning in that very proper business suite she is wearing. Joe wonders if Christina is an Angels fan.

 12:05 P.M       Lunchtime! Joe calls some of his buddies, inviting them to have lunch over in Newport Beach with him and play some Frisbee out on the sand. This time of the year, the visitors at the beach are looking particularly lovely. Unfortunately, none of Joe’s friends can make it. Seems their jobs lack that kind of freedom. Too bad. Oh, well he brought some beach attire and will just make do on his own.

1:15 P.M.         Fifth call - trouble in Irvine. Joe goes to a call in a fairly large office building located in Irvine - their Air Conditioning is not working very well, and the day is really hot! After some preliminary troubleshooting, Joe finds the trouble is in the Direct Digital Control system. Joe grabs his notebook computer out of his service van and heads to the room where the controllers are located. In just a few minutes, Joe is hooked into the buildings main controller. Whew! Good thing Joe learned DDC in school. As Joe looks out the window of the office building he sees the beach where he just had lunch! Boy, it sure looks small from the 14^th floor of the building!

3:30 P.M.         Last call for the day – near home. As Joe heads for his last call of the day, he notices that it is a small factory located near his house. As he works, he looks at the people working in manufacturing and thinks how lucky he is to be doing this kind of work. So much manufacturing is leaving this area, all of these people in this factory are probably actually “temporary workers” that could lose their jobs at a moments notice - when a machine is available to replace them, or the whole company moves to an area with lower labor rates. Good thing jobs like his can’t be replaced with machines and can’t move away, because someone has to actually go to these jobs to do the work. This work can’t be replaced by a machine or outsourced to another country, or state!

4:45 P.M.         Heading home. As he is going home Joe reflects on his day, it just went by in a flash. He felt good that he actually helped some people out, and got a lot of praise because everything he encountered, he was able to repair right away. Knowing how to properly diagnose and repair problems for his customers makes Joe feel like his official job title of “Field Service Technician” isn’t really accurate. He feels like an Heating Air Conditioning and Refrigeration equipment Doctor. He uses very sophisticated instruments and his state of the art training to make his diagnosis; he rarely gets it wrong. Maybe his buddy Dan who started school when he did, but at the local Community College, would like to go to the sports bar tonight and catch the game. Unfortunately, Dan can’t make it. He is still in school and has to study for a test. It is just as well, Joe knows he would probably have to pay for the drinks, Dan is always broke. Perhaps Karen would like to join him instead. Lucky Joe asked for her number when he saw her this morning.