You Don't Work So...

Just got done scrubbing 6 antique fans. We drove an hour to get to some auction in Vermont, and sat through hours of crap and repro cast iron banks to get to a huge lot of clocks the auctioneer had. When I got home I spent all night babysitting my rogue furnace, and so woke up late - 8:30. As soon as I got up, I went out to the trunk and grabbed last night's haul.

After lugging in about 11 clocks and the 6 fans, I set about testing things. I wound one clock...ticked for a few minutes, promising. Then I grabbed a wipe, wiped everything down, and tested each and every fan and 2 clocks. To my amazement, each of the fans worked perfectly. The clocks, however, not so much. One Westclox wall clock just about lit me up like Vegas, lol. A nice GE Westminster chime clock hummed and that was it.

I sighed and looked at the bedraggled pile of fans and went to work...2 of the fans had blades painted white. They looked rusty so that was kind of discouraging. I took the worst one and stuck it on a rack in my sink. I sprayed the bastard with Awesome and scrubbed it with a toothbrush. I could not get around the cage to the blades. I took the cage off. I spray more Awesome and the "rust" comes right off the blades - it was nicotine tar. I stood at my sink for about 2 1/2 hours straight until each fan was presentably clean, then I took the cords, bound them up nicely with a brand new twist tie. Later today I will oil 4 clocks and rewire 2 more. Yet, people think I just buy shit cheap, take a picture and list it.

I get the "You should go here for work" or "You don't work so..." bullshit from people all the time. I indeed work. It is hard work sometimes, and it sure as hell is time-consuming. Make no mistake, Just because I work from home, does not mean I have all this free time to do people's bidding. Things don't clean and repair themselves, nor do they pack and mail themselves. They do not research themselves, do write-ups on themselves, or appease customers when something is not up to par. That in itself is work and a skillset.