I’ve been an HVAC professional for over 5 years and never had anybody accused me of stealing from them until recently.
My boss called me into his office to speak with me about an important matter.
He said a customer called to complain that I stole something valuable from his house. When I asked what that could possibly have been, the boss said the customer claimed I stole a whole box of new air filters. I had to try to keep myself from laughing, but the boss was pretty serious about this. He said he couldn’t have any employees working for him who were thieves. I told him straight up that I was no thief, but even so, the boss said I needed to go see that customer and give him an apology or I would lose my job. I thought it was ridiculous, but he was firm on this decision. So I went to the house feeling miserable and went to tell the guy that I didn’t steal the air filters from him at all. Well, it was crazy when he apologized to me. He said that he always kept the air filters in a certain spot, but evidently his wife moved the box for some reason. When he saw they were missing after I worked on the HVAC, he just assumed that I took the air filters. I told him that I would have no use for air filters that weren’t even the right size for my own HVAC, so why would I possibly take them. Not to mention the risk of losing my job. He apologized again, and his wife even baked me some cookies. I took the cookies, thanked the people and went on my way. I told the boss everything that happened right away, and he apologized to me also for thinking that I could have stolen from one of the clients.