Hot take: Was the customer right to flip out over a 3 cent part, or was I being lazy?
Last Tuesday I was on a install job in a old house near Brighton. Had to swap out a toilet fill valve. Standard Fluidmaster 400A, takes maybe 15 minutes. I get the new one in, test it, works fine. As I'm packing up, the homeowner notices the old float arm I left on the counter. She asks if I'm gonna take it. I said nah, it's just trash. She gets all quiet and says she wanted to keep it as a spare part for her other toilet. I told her that model is discontinued and the new valve has a different design, so it wouldn't match anyway. She goes off, says I'm wasteful and that part could've fixed her other toilet's issue. I stood there thinking, lady, it's a 3 cent piece of plastic that won't fit anything you own. But she kept going on about how I should've asked before tossing it. My boss backed me up later, but I still wonder if I should've just handed her the stupid thing and avoided the fight. What do you think? Should I have offered it up, or was she overreacting over literally pennies?