Mistakes and Accidents

Here's a short blurb I wrote a few weeks ago.


If I didn't make mistakes, I wouldn't know where I was going.
~ me

I had quite a unique and satisfying day today. Which is kinda strange really, seeing as I spent an hour cleaning up 10 gallons of filthy water that spewed from a drain when the plumber poked the plug out. See, we've had this issue with a clogged drain now for what seems like forever. Over the years it gradually got worse to the point where, in the past few weeks, water almost ceased to flow at all. I tried all sorts of drain opening liquids to no avail. The clog laughed at them and farted obnoxious gasses into the room. But the laundry machine was the only impact, and when the sink filled it would still go down eventually, so I thought I might have time yet to figure out my next move.

I was wrong. The next move was made by the clog. Wednesday, the clog stubbornly refused to let any water down at all.

I gave up and called a plumber.

Now you must understand that I really have nothing against plumbers. It’s just that I'm a cheap bastard, so I try and do everything I can myself. But there is a limit. A time when I realize I simply don't have the knowledge, time or whatever it will take to fix whatever isn't working. So I did a Google search and called A&A Plumbing.

Earl showed up this morning at 10. A younger guy, about 6' 2" tall, beefy, but very soft-spoken. I showed him the clog in the laundry room and he got to work with a motor operated snake that looked just like the advertisement from Roto Rooter. It seemed to be just the ticket to mangle the clog and clean out the pipe. So I left Earl to work. In order to be at the house today, I had to work from home myself so I had things to do.

I made a cup of coffee, then walked back downstairs to get to work when I noticed a rapidly expanding puddle of water in the family room. Earl was working on the opposite side of the wall and obviously couldn't see this small lake. I figured it was at least 12 feet across so I alerted Earl to the problem. He stopped flowing water down the drain and came out to look in his own, very quiet way. He didn't say much and didn't have much of a reaction, but I figured he needed a bit of help with this one so I started moving furniture out of the way and asked if he had a wet vac on his truck. Unfortunately he didn't so after we got the furniture out of the way, I got our old Bissell carpet cleaner out and started sucking up the lake.

Earl was obviously mortified and probably thought I was going to jump in his s**t. You see, he had snaked this tool around and it ended up coming out of a drain that was set up in the wall of the family room so a sink could be installed for a bar. Once he knocked this plug out, all the water simply emptied into the room.

He tried to help clean up but I wanted him to finish what he was doing, so I got to work sucking up the water and asked him to finish working on the clog.

The floor is concrete so it would clean up easily. I explained it was just a mistake and being an engineer, I assured him my mistakes were far bigger and better than his, which truthfully is no exaggeration. Hell, when I screw something up it’s huge, and I do it often enough to know. This was just a little water on a concrete floor.

Earl finished up and put a cap on the exposed pipe outlet, then helped put the furniture back. He didn't say much, didn't look me in the eye, didn't know what else to do. Just as he finished cleaning up and was about to leave, he said he wouldn't charge me for the job. Just wanted to apologize again and get out of there I suppose.

But hell, he'd only been at our house an hour, had cleared the drain (it was working very well now), fixed the pipe, and helped clean up the mess. Not charging for the job wouldn't be fair to him so I handed him $40 and thanked him for everything.

We talked a bit. I told him how I couldn't get a snake into the clog and he explained how to modify the typical snake you get at the hardware store to go into pipes like this. I could do it myself now but I'd get Earl to come back any time. Seemed like a pretty decent guy and I think I made his day by not over-reacting and treating him fairly. He left happy. Hell, if I didn't get paid every time I screwed something up, I'd be living in a cardboard box next to some dumpster behind Walmart.