The $10 Walmart Hose

Mondays. Does everybody hate Mondays? I usually like Mondays. Not that I don't have anything to do on Mondays, but it is usually not my stress day. That is Friday, as all the campers come in and the problems pop up. No matter how hard you try to keep everything in good working order, there always seem to be an unforeseen problem that happens.

This past Friday had it's problems, like any other weekend that is busy. One of my tenants was nice enough to help me out with turning on the water main to the tent area ... only to find that the main line across the road had burst. While HeWho plumbs was in the midst of fixing that, I had another water problem on the other side of the park. I was pretty pleased with myself when I solved that one with a "Y" connector and an extra length of hose. I told the woman who took the items to just leave them connected to the hydrant and I would collect them Sunday afternoon. I even offered to move them to another site, but they didn't want to move.

It was a large group of 9 families camping together. I had reserved a block of 10 sites for them. Only one other complaint from the group involved electricity and I dispatched HeWho to deal with that. He solved that one and the rest of the weekend offered no complaints other than the teen bully.

The 25' drinking water hose was not to be found yesterday. Happens all the time. You loan something and it goes home with camper. Probably not intentional ... maybe. But, it gets to be expensive. Since I had let the group pick their own sites in the reserved block of sites, I don't know who used the hose. I pulled the registrations and only one person in the group filled in their phone number. I called and asked that person to call the person with the hose and have them call me.

My intention was to ask them to bring the hose back on their next visit. No accusations or anything like that. When I answered the phone tonight I was totally unprepared for this man yelling at me. He accused me of calling 6 people who then called him about my $10 Walmart hose. Walmart does carry the product, but it is a Camco hose to be specific. He would not let me say a word (and that is something, as I can usually talk over anybody). He told me he didn't know what to do with the hose, so he took it and if I wanted it back I could send a call tag from UPS. I told him to keep the hose, but he would not stop.

He kept on. He told me it was great inconvenience that he had been subjected to and that he didn't complain about my rates. " You made plenty of money to be complaining about a $10 WalMart hose and having everybody call me about a stupid hose. I didn't know what to do with it. I don't even want it, I have plenty of hoses." Once again, I told him to keep the hose, that I had instructed the woman who picked up the hose to just leave it on the hydrant.

One would think that I could simply bid the man farewell and get off the phone. Yes, ..... but no. He went one to tell me that they had a great time and that I made a lot of money off of them and that they would probably come back. You might be thinking this would end on a positive note, but he started up again about me calling 6 people to call him and all the inconvenience .....

I had started to lose the small amount of patience with this man and cut in to tell him that I called ONE person, the only person who bothered to put all the information on the registration. This is when he tells me he did not have a full hook up site and that this park doesn't even have a dump station. I tried to tell him that if had asked for assistance, it would have been provided. I don't even know if he heard me, as he was ranting again about the $10 WalMart hose. He was told again to KEEP THE HOSE. This prompted him to ask me if he should give me a review. It was posed as a threat. I told him I did not know what he wanted, that I had already told him to KEEP THE HOSE. Again he suggested I send a UPS pick-up tag for the hose, the $10 WalMart hose.

And that's when I lost it and told him I found his phone call to be very upsetting and that I wanted him to KEEP THE HOSE and NEVER COME BACK. I hung up on him as I could see this conversation lasting into infinity with no resolve as far as he was concerned. I maintained enough control to not tell him what he could do with the hose, the $10 WalMart hose.

In case you think this is over, stay tuned tomorrow because he called back.