When the plumbers are away...

What do the girls in the office do when all the plumbers are out until late in the day and the facilities are down?

Turning the tables

Years ago, when the stock market was booming, stock brokers used to call with hot stock tips.  After awhile, they became such a nuisance that I began to try and counter their advances by trying to sell them plumbing.  Most of them were from La Jolla, so they were actually in an area that we service. 

“Where are you calling from?” I would query.  

“La Jolla, CA,” they would reply.  

“Let me ask you something,” I would continue, “do you have hot water in the building where you work?” 

"Well, yes," they would say, at which point I would advise them that they were probably going to be in the market for a new water heater at some point and then I would begin giving them details of everything that might be encountered should that indeed become the case.  The more they would try and interrupt me and try to get back on the subject of whatever stock plan they were hawking, the more detailed and uninterruptable I would become until finally, exasperated, they would hang up.  

I’d been doing that for several months when one solicitor, listening to my initial spiel, paused for a long moment and said:  “Hey…I remember you!”

Poking fun at salesmen

All day long I receive calls from solicitors trying to separate me from the meager profits the company has made that week.  I generally tell them that they’ve reached a dispatch line and there is no decision maker available with whom they can talk.  Occasionally I get bored and try and sell them a plumbing job.  

To a guy in New York I offered to fix his sink faucet for $125, but advised him that I’d have to charge him travel time at fifty cents a mile, which being 3000 miles away, would be 6000 miles @ .50, would total $3125.  

My favorite was when Yodel.com called and I asked the gentleman if he could yodel.  “No,” he said and so I asked him if he would like to hear me yodel.  “I don’t know,” he said, “I called to talk about advertising.”  “Well, if you’re going to call yourself ‘Yodel.com,” I said, “You should at least be willing to listen to me yodel.  So here it is,” I continued and then I yodeled for a few seconds.  “How was that?” I said to the dial tone when I was finished.  

A couple of weeks later another Yodel.com solicitor called and this time I was able to coax him into yodeling a couple of lines after I gave him some basic instructions.  “Geez, that was horrible,” I said, “I can’t buy anything from a Yodel rep that can’t yodel any better than that.”

More frightening than the dead

Lucky and his crew were installing a new sewer lateral for one of the local mortuaries.  He was down in the ditch when one of the morticians came out to see how they were doing.  Lucky engaged him in conversation and the mortician advised his of some of the issues he had been encountering with the sewer line they were replacing.  

Lucky segued to a story about how he once replaced a sump pump and a malfunction had literally showered him with the drain water that was in the sump.  


The mortician listened with horror and blurted out, “Jesus, Lucky, I couldn’t do what you guys do!”