The Quick & Hot under-sink water unit is leaking.  Who you gonna call?  Despite your first guess (shouted out in your best Ray Parker, Jr. voice), I called and carefully explained the situation to the nice man who answered the phone at the office of The Plumber.  The Plumber, whose name I’ve seen on billboards every day of my nearly two decades in this valley.  The Plumber, whose wife I’ve known since our kids were in elementary school together.  Water + Leak = The Plumber.  It was a logical line of thinking, or so I believed.

Silly me.

Before calling The Plumber, I unplugged the under-sink hot water unit, because despite not knowing anything about how-to-fix the leak under my sink, I happen to know that water and electricity are bad bedmates.  So, to avoid personal injury and possibly electrocuting The Plumber (whose wife, I know, happens to love him), I quickly pulled the plug, to save us both.

The Plumber, is an awfully busy guy.  So, he sends one of his many plumbing wizards out to do his bidding.  Mr. Wizard arrives, squats down in that position responsible for the crack of legend and scratches his… head (Cheeky you! You went elsewhere, didn’t you?).  Turns out, Mr. Wizard is mystified by my under-sink hot water unit and I try to convince him it’s not the zebra in the field of horses he believes it to be.

I point out that the hose attaching the unit to the water line has brought its own crack to the party and that I’d tried to purchase a replacement, but my local hardware store didn’t carry what was needed.  Mr. Wizard shakes his weary head and says
he’ll look in his truck, but seriously doubts that he has any appropriate hosing.  Returning five minutes later, he indeed confirms that there is nothing to be found and he’s certain (despite my insistence) that there wouldn’t be any at the office either.  The hose now has the upper hand, defeating both hardware store and highly-paid plumbing professionals.  Mr. Wizard suggests that I get the hosing I need from the good people at Quick & Hot (which, if this were Las Vegas, makes this last sentence rotate on an entirely different axis).

In order to be helpful (and to earn his pay, I suppose) Mr. Wizard cuts the hose above the leak, repositions the entire unit up two inches (“…with drywall anchors!” he tells me) and announces he is finished.  He taps the top of the sink, stating that the unit also has a spot there that seems to be leaking.  I politely ask him to fix it.  He shakes his head and says, “Well, these things require special tools that I don’t have.”

“You’re a plumber.  Your business is to deal with pipes and hoses and water and leaks.  What possible tools do they not provide you with, to do your job?”

“An allen wrench.”

“Wha?… Listen, I’m a girl who doesn’t know nothin’ ‘bout tools, but I know that an allen wrench is not special.  Ikea hands those out all the live-long day for free and charges for their meatballs.  Not THAT unusual.”  [FYI, Mr. Wizard… calling it a Hex Key makes it considerably more remarkable and odd.   You might want to lead with that, next time.]

Mr. Wizard stares at the floor and sighs. “Sign here.”  He hands me a clipboard.  And no pen.  Apparently, there are many tools too special to trust professionals with.  I used my own.  Ironically, one that advertises one of our local electricians.

14 minutes: $140 dollars.  Ten bucks a minute.  You can’t blow through that in the most entertaining of arcades.  In fact, slot machines give more play per minute.  And I’m willing to bet if those folks at Quick & Hot were to put out a shingle in Nevada, they’d do a bang up business in a quarter of an hour, too.

In my next life, I’m going to fill out an application to either come back as a cat or a plumber.  Not just any plumber, either: The Plumber.  Using my pen.