Had an interesting occurance at the shop this afternoon. I stopped in to drop off some prints from the dive trip, owner asked me to cover for a few minutes, he had a couple of errands to run. No problem.

Guy comes in with a tank he wanted filled. Now tanks need a hydrostatic test every 5 years, and an annual visual inspection yearly. I can’t fill it if it doesn’t meet those. The hydro date was Apr 08, and the last Visual was 2013. The biggest problem is that he had bought it from the owner of the OTHER dive shop in town last month and was assured that it was ready for use. He uses them for filling high powered Air Rifles (not your old pump-up pellet gun by any measure) for target shooting.

I was dealing as diplomatically as I could with the problem when the owner came back, and we all agreed the best thing was to rent him a tank for the weekend, and that he should take the matter up with the owner of the other shop. Of course it’s possible that he was mistaken in what he understood, but the fact that a new (used) tank had an expired hydro and an out of date vis while being sold is almost unthinkable. It’s not like it’s a major expense, especially considering the shop can do the vis in house. (Hydro needs special and expensive equipment, everybody farms it out to the people who have the equipment)

All those years teaching seems to have sharpened up my “Soft Skills”, since everybody walked away as happy as the situation allowed.

RBS