The People Problem: Why Your Business Is Bleeding Out In The Middle

In a typical HVAC or plumbing company, roles evolve like this:

• You, the owner, do everything at first.
• You get busy and promote your sharpest tech into “service manager.”
• You grab someone organized and willing to take heat and make them “dispatcher.”

None of those middle roles were built with clear authority, boundaries or training. They are just good people thrown into the buffer zone between your financial anxiety and the field’s physical reality.

That buffer zone is where:

• Techs feel controlled and disrespected.
• Managers feel set up to fail.
• Dispatch feels like a punching bag.
• You feel like nobody “gets it” but you.

That is what “bleeding out in the middle” really means.

If you had to pick one role that quietly determines whether your business is stable or chaotic, it is the service manager.

Authority without power

Most service managers land in the job because they were your best or most reliable tech. They go from “one of the crew” to “the boss” overnight. Suddenly they are expected to enforce policies they did not write and hit KPIs they did not set.

At the same time, they rarely get real power. They cannot adjust pay, fix broken processes, or say “no” to you when the board is already full. They live in a kind of middle management purgatory.

The seniority inversion problem

You might have a 22 or 28 year old manager who is great with software and dashboards trying to “hold accountable” a tech who has been doing installs since that manager was a kid.

The training paradox that freezes everyone

Service managers also live inside the worst question in the trades:

“If I train them and they leave, I just built my own competition.
If I do not train them and they stay, I pay for callbacks and trash my reputation.”

That fear keeps your people stuck at “good enough” and keeps you stuck as the final safety net on tough jobs.

If the service manager is your tactical commander, the dispatcher is your communications officer under constant fire.

In reality, especially in Texas summers, the job is this:

• Talk to homeowners who are furious and scared because their house is 88 degrees.
• Talk to techs who are exhausted, overheated and sick of being pushed into “one more call.”
• Talk to owners who see every missed opportunity as a financial wound.

Summer in Texas turns the board into a war room

When the heat index spikes, the board fills with more emergencies than you can physically handle. Dispatchers end up overbooking techs to avoid saying no, taking abuse from customers, and documenting everything in “military block lettering” to protect themselves.

Burnout is not a risk. It is baked in if you do not redesign how you support that role.

The office vs field cold war

Under all of this is a quiet cultural war. Techs think dispatch sits in AC and doesn't get it. Dispatch thinks techs are dramatic and slow. So they start punishing each other. It is petty. It is human. And it is incredibly expensive.

Here is what it looks like to actually fix this, not just complain about it.

Why this matters more than “finding better people”

It is tempting to think the answer is hiring a “unicorn” dispatcher or a “rockstar” service manager. That is just another way of saying “I want someone else to magically fix my broken system.”

The companies that will win the next decade will be the ones that make those roles sane, clear and respected.

Stop the bleeding there and everything gets easier: Techs feel heard, dispatch feels like part of the team, and you finally have space to get out of the truck.