19/06/2019
HOW TO ENGAGE THE SERVICES OF A PLUMBER.
-Call the plumber after lunch on friday or before a public holiday weekend.
- Hassle him to fit you in.
- Estimate the time and ease of job. (They like that) explain that it is a five minute job that you could do yourself if “only you had the time.”
- Negotiate the smallest most inconvenient window of booking opportunity. (I have to go to the gym or some other more important engagement than your blocked bog, will smooth this over.)
- Ask for a fixed price. (Even of its a burst pipe or blocked drain) When the plumber refuses to be nailed down, some jovial comment like “I should have been a plumber” will keep the negotiation nice and light.
- Tell him that you will run it by your wife and call back in five.
- Call ten other plumbers and then phone back. If he answers the phone again and arrives be sure to be in the shower or on the way home.
- Show him the job which does not vaguely resemble what you described.
- Ask him to move his van. Someone needs to get their car out and it clearly cant wait the “five minutes”.
- Show him where the problem is. Explain how you cant find the key to the side gate and he will have to lug his equipment around.
- Now is probably a good time to point out that the problem appeared on Monday.
- Embark on a long winded story involving names of people he could not give a toss about, and every completely unrelated event leading to this moment in time.
- Share your half cocked theory on what is going on. (“Air in the pipes” perhaps?)
- Apologise for the 20 years of used water build up around your toilet where he will be working. Explain how it is someone else’s fault. It will make it more palatable.
- Tell them one of your close relatives was a plumber. (He will be extremely interested and it will create a sense of kinship between you)
- Explain that you would be quite capable of doing the job and that you have done heaps of plumbing in the past. (He will love to hear that his knowledge, skills and necessary equipment amount to being a glorified handyman.)
- Tell the plumber that normally you use a different plumber but he was not answering his phone.
- Wait until he is nearly finished and ask him if he has time to embark on the dreaded “Friday tap marathon”. There are no sweeter words on a Friday afternoon at 3 pm than “while I've got you here”
- Make sure you have one of them terrifying, cold, damp, dead skin removing scrunchy things keeping guard over the shower handle.
- Watch the plumber closely. The plumbing skills you gleaned from your family member will place you well to critique his every action.
- Pull out some parts you picked up from Bunnings 10 years ago. (No sense wasting huh?)
- Keep locking the door. It may be a minor inconvenience for the plumber to keep having to ask you to unlock it whenever he needs to go to his truck, but home invasions are on the rise.
- Grill the plumber over why he has to leave site to pick up part for your Chinese imported toilet suite. That you “got a great deal on”.
- Complain about the invoice and whinge to all your mates about the plumbers price and unpleasant demeanour.
- Call a week later and say “Ever since your guy was here, the refrigerator light isn’t coming on”
