Overflowing toilet, a piece of Americana

vulgar but all-too-true image from

My toilet was not flushing right. Overflowing. I won't go into the fecal/farcical details.

I tried everything to fix the "issue" -- after all there are no "problems" in the Land of the Free, just "issues." I tried:

"Get-rid-of-your-clog" chemicals bought at the local supermarket; my "brain [sorry, I meant drain] buster" [here pictured blue; mine is black in color and far bigger, but I cannot find a pix of it on Google], one of humankind's greatest inventions.

But nothing fixed the quite annoying overflowing toilet "issue," not even my ungloved hand searching around in the bowels of the toilet itself.

So I call Bill The Plumber's company. Nice, in-charge guy, strong, baritone voice. Clearly the boss -- and why not? How else do you run a company?

He efficiently (after getting my credit card info -- not exactly a reassuring request) sent "his" plumber, José (when we met a the entrance of my condo, we exchanged names), to fix the "issue" on the very day that I called (time: before noon). José was admirably punctual and polite.

Once in my apartment, José put on a blue rubber glove and with the help of a plunger fixed the issue in the one and only toilet in my modest one-bedroom abode -- subito.

It took José ten minutes (ok, I didn't have a stopwatch) to fix the "issue."

I flushed the toilet to check his work. Clearly it was an all-American success. José, a careful craftman, double-checked it too.

After talking with his boss on his cell phone, José presented me with the bill (documenting the expense of an in-house service that required him to drive -- granted, time is money -- to my one-bedroom apt):

I quote from the bill:

to repair the toilet use the hand snaker, and was all good.

Service call charge: $52.00
hours 1/2: $52.00
please pay service man: $119.00 

Addition (4/7/2016): As a valued FB friend pointed out to me (or, should I say, diplomatically hinted) after the friend kindly read the piece, my math leaves much to be desired ... otherwise, of course, I would not have approved the bill. Time to go back to primary school.

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See, as a point of pay comparison, "I am an adjunct professor who teaches five classes. I earn less than a pet-sitter," theguardian.com.