Blog . Eli Duke . Com

You’d think that as a plumber I’d be spending a good deal of my time unclogging toilets, at least, that’s what people that aren’t plumbers think that plumbers are usually doing. Well, it took a little over a week in this job for me to get my first unclogging. They sent Walter and Me (Pork Chop & Pinky, respectively) to tackle it.

We hiked up the hill to the women’s can at the Carp(enters) Shop. We snaked it and plunged it and snaked it and plunged it until we couldn’t snake it or plunge it any more. It was time to get our hands dirty. We pumped out the excess water, unbolted it, and removed it. Hot water ran like butter down the drain line, so the clog had to be inside the toilet.

We tipped it on it’s back side and I put on some rubber gloves, but when I went to reach up inside the thing I found a round piece of plastic flush against the exit hole. It took a fair bit of finagaling and a pair of channel locks to rescue the culprit: the lid to a coffe mug. I was rolling!

Somehow this thing had worked its way OFF someone’s coffee mug and INTO the toilet, then it wiggled itself perfectly into position to completely block the exit hole. It’s like that’s what it was made to do. It didn’t matter how many times we snaked it or plunged it because it just worked it’s way right back into position everytime we flushed it.

I cleaned the lid off and brought it with me to 10 o’clock break, but the first thing that everyone said when I showed them was, You kept it? That thing’s filthy! I thought that was an interest first reaction, so what I gathered from this experience is that everyone thinks I’m a moron. They think I’m the kind of guy that would pull something out of a toilet, covered with shit and piss, and then just throw it in my pocket and lick my fingers clean.

Did I keep it? Of course I fucking kept it. That shitty coffee mug lid is a better souvenir than anything I could buy in the store. Sometimes we forget that kitchen counters are dirtier than toilet seats.