We've been having a problem at home with a toilet, and each of our children has been accused and convicted without trial at least once, but I still don't know what’s wrong with it.  Let's just say I should have bought a case of the wax rings, as many times as I've taken the toilet off and put it back on.  If I never have to clean that wax off stuff again, that will be soon enough.

I now understand why plumbers charge what they charge.
 
This project reminds me of one of my least favorite management experiences.  One early summer evening we had some torrential rainstorms, and our dispatcher called me to tell me the roof was leaking in the offices.  This was a long-standing problem.  The building was old and had a flat roof, and the drains would clog with leaves.  The water level would then rise high enough that it would go over the sheet metal that curled up along the interior walls of the roof.

My first question was, "Did you call Todd?"  Todd was the owner, and she had, and he had told her to have one of the drivers climb up onto the roof to clear the drain.  This was a 2-story building.  The driver, a very nice, rather portly young man, made it halfway up the ladder, thought about our commission-based pay system, and climbed back down.  I told her to call Todd back and emphasize the need for his presence.

I hung up the phone, cursed to myself for a few minutes, got in my car, and drove to work.

The dispatch office looked like the house in The Cat In The Hat a few pages before the mother returns home.  Receptacles of all kinds balanced on broomsticks, on chairs with wheels, and on computer monitors, half-full of rainwater and filling quickly, and a goldfish barking orders.  The dispatcher was emptying one receptacle as another filled.  Window blinds had been rearranged.  Some of the light bulbs were out or flickering.  I was thinking about the huge buckets that were on the ceiling above the office, placed there to catch the water as it leaked in, that were likely ready to break through.  Miraculously, none of the computer equipment had been damaged.  And she was still taking calls.

Getting onto the roof was a problem:
1.  The ladder was just long enough to reach the roof, if you had a 2-degree angle between the bottom of the ladder and the side of the building.
2.  I am terrified of heights.
3.  There was lightning.
4.  Did I mention there was lightning?

I got onto the roof by climbing onto an intermediate roof, pulling the ladder up with me, carefully walking on the tin-covered 2x4 roof supports to an adjacent wall, and then placing the ladder on a reinforced area where I could make it up onto the main roof.  Up on the roof, I found Lake Michigan.  I think I saw a salmon returning to its spawning ground.  It was KNEE-DEEP where the drain was.  I reached down and dug out the primordial ooze with my hands.  The current almost took me down when the drain cleared.  As I'm standing there, on top of a metal roof, knee-deep in water, I realize the lightning isn't that far off, and I'm thinking, "This is why I got into management."

The view of the city was nice, however.

As with all climbing efforts, the trip down was much worse than the trip up, especially now that the building was 3 feet taller with the weight of all the water removed.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com

In the impound tow world, we sometimes experience gatecrashers, vehicle owners who like to redeem their vehicle from the impound lot by force.  A common practice is to ram the gate full-force with a vehicle to knock it down.  You can do a lot of things to prevent this activity, or to prevent it from working.

At one of our impound lots, a vehicle owner did this successfully in the wee hours of the morning, but he was especially clever.  He hotwired a car to crash the gate, and then he drove his own vehicle out.  That prevented him from damaging his own car.  The next day we called the fence company out to fix the gate, which was damaged but didn't have to be replaced.

Well, apparently that 100-yard trip across the lot and through the gate in the hotwired car had impressed this guy with the performance of the car, because he came back the next night and crashed the gate AGAIN with this car, only this time he kept the car.  You have to appreciate the combination of skill, guts, and persistence this particular gatecrasher had.  My boss was in a tizzy, of course, but to us drivers, it was kind of amusing.

The story doesn't end there, of course.  Two nights later, I was sent out to impound a car from someone's driveway in the neighborhood of our impound lot.  It was a little strange, but someone had simply left their car in a graveled side driveway next to someone's house, clearly off the road and on private property.  The homeowner called the police first to make sure it wasn't stolen, and he was advised to have it towed away.

In the 20 minutes between the homeowner's call and my arrival, a DIFFERENT vehicle, being chased by the police, crashed into this first vehicle.  The driver t-boned this illegally parked car, pinning it against the homeowner's fence, bailed out and ran, and when I got there, the police were scouring the neighborhood for him.

I had to wait until they authorized me to move the escape vehicle away from the vehicle I was supposed to tow.  I wrote up an incident report while I was waiting, and another tow company showed up on a police rotation tow to impound the escape vehicle.  Then I completed my tow and went on my way.

The next day my boss was reading my incident report, and he recognized the vehicle description and license plate number of the escape vehicle as THE CAR THAT CRASHED OUR GATE TWICE.  This guy really got around, and this little Corolla he liked was very durable.  I hadn't recognized it, because there were several hundred cars in the impound lot, and I had never known for sure which one was creating all the havoc.  I don't think they ever caught the guy.  My boss called the other tow company and talked them into letting us get the car from them.  We blocked it in with two other vehicles, and no one ever claimed it.

Imagine the story from the gatecrasher's end.

Have a safe and profitable week.

Sincerely,
Nick Kemper
www.TowPartsNow.com