Many people have the tendency to look down on the people that join their team last.
This was the mistake everyone at the HVAC company I work for did. Dave was polite and very respectful despite being introduced as the best heating professional in the industry. My boss spoke highly of him that he had to convince him to join the company straight from college. Unfortunately, not many people were happy about a young man being praised and loved by the boss. It seemed as though he would easily choose Dave to replace him after retirement. Unfortunately for Dave, this meant attracting a lot of unfriendly interactions at the workplace. I knew how this felt so I tried to be friendly and cool with him. He did not struggle with anyone for the good HVAC maintenance jobs. Instead, he gladly accepted any jobs given to him, even those that were beneath his skills. It took every other senior HVAC contractor failing to handle the heating unit in the mayor’s office for Dave’s real prowess to be felt. When everyone else failed, the boss sent Dave and was confident he would fix whatever the issue was. Surprisingly, Dave was able to resolve the heating issue in no time. After about twenty minutes, the furnace in the mayor’s office was working like it had no issues prior to Dave’s intervention. After this experience , everyone in the office had a new admiration for him. Everything changed from that point and he was now given some of the most challenging HVAC installation tasks. He turned out to be very knowledgeable and skilled with numerous HVAC equipment. Everyone in the office would inquire about new HVAC technologies from him as he was very updated. The good thing is that he managed to stay humble.