A Plumber | This Past Weekend #249
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 39 minutes
Words per Minute
198.87018
Summary
Brad Laskoski is a plumber and a regular guy. He grew up in a family of plumbers and worked his way through the ranks of the U.S. Army. He was a member of the elite elite SEAL Team Six and served as a heavy duty plumber for over 20 years. He is now retired from the military and is now a full time plumber.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I want to let you know about some new shows that are coming out right now.
00:00:03.620
Toronto, we've just added a late show on February 21st.
00:00:09.380
February 15th, the Gold Country Casino in Oroville, California.
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Those tickets are a little higher priced than usual.
00:00:36.600
And that was the agreement that the theater would do with me.
00:00:41.820
So if it's too high priced for you, that's understandable.
00:00:45.460
I'll be back in the future at a more decent rate.
00:00:48.940
And also, I want to let you know, February 28th in Oxen Hill, Maryland.
00:01:01.720
He is, this is one of my favorite episodes, and we're so glad that he was here.
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Ladies and gentlemen, the toilet champion is here.
00:01:47.240
Yeah, just happy to talk to a plumber man, because I don't know anything really about plumbing.
00:01:55.000
So what is the difference between plumbing and septic tank?
00:02:00.120
Like sometimes you hear like, you know, you hear people have septic tanks.
00:02:03.740
I would hear a lot of times growing up, people had septic tanks, you know?
00:02:07.160
Or somebody got like, you know, something happened to them by a septic tank.
00:02:12.800
That's how I actually got my start, was dealing with septic tanks.
00:02:15.820
I started 20-something years ago with Roto-Rooter.
00:02:26.260
So yeah, the very first day I get hired, I got out of the Army, I was 20 years old,
00:02:39.540
I mean, was there like a program from the Army to Roto-Rooter?
00:02:44.080
I got out of the Army and I went to work at Lowe's, the home improvement store.
00:02:47.940
I was actually, when I got out of the Army, I was 20 and I had applied to Atlanta SWAT
00:02:53.780
and I was going through all the SWAT qualifications and everything else because I was kind of heavy
00:02:59.900
So I didn't really have a whole lot of skills when I got out.
00:03:05.260
So I graduated early, you know, a little smart, you know, figured some stuff out.
00:03:13.320
Most people would call me the hardest worker they ever met.
00:03:15.760
So I kind of take that as a point of pride, you know?
00:03:21.440
Because Joe Rogan, I think, is the hardest worker that I know.
00:03:28.260
There has to be more than one because he's in too many places at once.
00:03:31.460
Sometimes I have a, I have like kind of a daydream where he's going to bring me in a room
00:03:35.060
and be like, hey, hey, I want you to meet these other Joe Rogans.
00:03:44.660
Dude, that's a note for young fellas if you're like, I don't know if I should go into the
00:04:00.900
So they offered to reenlist me, but I had just met this girl.
00:04:07.840
Did you get her pregnant or she was pregnant when you met her?
00:04:25.420
Anyway, the point of the septic thing was, dude that hires me is a big old fat dude from
00:04:37.160
And we go out and dig up a septic tank, which is plumbing.
00:04:42.640
So the pipe that leaves your house goes underground and it goes out to a box in the yard.
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And that, it basically naturally decomposes everything that's in there.
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But it's, it's, it's a big, it's, it's five feet deep.
00:05:02.180
And it's, so it's five feet deep and it's buried in the ground.
00:05:09.220
It's a, uh, it's about like this table, you know, it's a big, long rectangle, maybe a
00:05:19.260
Uh, well then this guy kind of, I guess, welded it with like a, um, maybe a concrete.
00:05:25.540
Well, he might've used a, he might've had a steel box.
00:05:28.080
Cause I mean, you, I've seen some rustic septic tanks made out of 55 gallon drums with holes
00:05:38.860
You've seen fucking the Noah's Ark of fucking in ground shit.
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It went out about a hundred yards and that was it.
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Roots were all growing up into the end of the pipe and everything.
00:05:59.280
So I had to go there and cut them all off and open it out and snake the pipe out and
00:06:16.640
Brown water or gray water, like kitchen sink water and, uh, washing machines, dishwasher,
00:06:22.300
You can actually, uh, and I do, uh, install a 55 gallon drum with a pump in it and separate
00:06:31.660
So all that washing machine water, that's bad for a septic tank now goes into a 55 gallon
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So that's the washing machine water, that gray water.
00:06:48.300
Cause it's got soap in it and soap and the phosphates are good for your grass.
00:06:52.860
So that's, so, but the dark water, the black, black water has to be by law has to be contained,
00:07:02.200
Well, in a septic tank system, after a couple of years, all that stuff breaks down and separates
00:07:06.460
the solids will sink to the bottom and turn to a sludge.
00:07:09.380
The things that are not biodegradable, like a wedding ring or something, like if a dog
00:07:16.800
Anything that would sink will go to the bottom, obviously, but anything that's grease won't
00:07:21.920
It'll collect and it'll turn into a ball, basically a hard kind of crust on the top of the septic
00:07:32.100
One time I popped a septic tank open and I saw about 10,000 condoms in there.
00:07:36.820
I mean, I didn't count them or anything, but they were all over the top.
00:07:43.440
He was standing there watching me dig this tank up, right?
00:07:57.860
Well, he called me because his toilet wouldn't flush no more, right?
00:08:00.820
And I get there and I snake the drain out and it won't go down.
00:08:06.480
And when I open up the tank and you look down, they're just everywhere.
00:08:09.000
They're coating the wall, the pink ones and green ones and blue.
00:08:14.940
Dude worked at a tire manufacturing plant, the graveyard shift, for like 20 years.
00:08:27.760
So sometimes opening up that septic tank, it's almost like a time capsule for your butt or
00:08:31.760
almost or for your, you know, for below the waist.
00:08:34.800
It's almost like a time capsule for what you or anything you've been doing in your home.
00:08:45.020
The next time that happened where I found condoms in the tank, it was a young girl.
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And the grandma was standing there watching me.
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I mean, it was just a, those are the only two ladies living in the house, is the 14-year-old
00:09:07.320
That's going to be an awkward game of go fish that they play later in the day, you know?
00:09:25.220
And so now when you, what was like your vibe when you started working there?
00:09:28.920
Were you like, oh, this is a career that I want to make?
00:09:32.100
Or were you like, this is just a job that I want to do?
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What was kind of your goal, if you had any going into it?
00:09:46.240
And they say, I've heard, this is a saying in the universe, that plumbers make more than
00:10:02.080
They get paid a lot for what they do, but they don't do it all the time.
00:10:05.760
So that's great that they get $400 an hour, three hours a week.
00:10:11.020
You know, I work 50, 60 hours a week, every week.
00:10:14.820
You know, I'm only charging 100, maybe more or whatever, but.
00:10:22.880
You always hear that lawyer, that plumbers make more than lawyers.
00:10:31.240
I went to a university professor's house years ago, and I handed him the bill at the
00:10:38.040
Like, he was just, couldn't believe it cost that much.
00:10:43.960
Do you realize it took me 10 years to learn how to do this?
00:10:49.700
You know, it's as hard, I think, of course, because I went down that road, as any eight
00:10:56.300
year doctorate or master's degree that you're going to get.
00:11:06.440
And so you start this job, you got the guy with Roto-Rooter.
00:11:12.600
With that guy for five years, a little over five years.
00:11:15.880
Dude gave me a $1,000 bonus for every year I worked for him.
00:11:19.900
So second year was two grand, third year's three, fifth year was five.
00:11:23.660
Next time you use this later in his Christmas bonus discussion, too, I can already tell.
00:11:30.240
Bro, that's God working right there because it's been on my mind and then you bring it
00:11:36.100
Dude needs a little bit of help every once in a while, right?
00:11:48.600
I saw on one of your other shows, you were talking about if it came down to killing him
00:11:59.240
I forgot I said that, but I still agree with myself.
00:12:03.780
So, and also with plumbing, if it's a holiday, then those prices are higher, right?
00:12:12.800
When I was working for the commercial companies, yeah.
00:12:16.340
Now that I actually quit working for commercial companies, mostly because I was tired of hearing
00:12:23.980
the complaints from the customers about how much it costs.
00:12:26.860
You know, I'm going and doing the work and I'm getting paid from the company.
00:12:35.800
But, I mean, you got to understand, any large company, they got overhead, they got, you
00:12:42.360
Yeah, you just have to get insurance just for having a place.
00:12:45.080
Dude, my L&I just for myself is almost 20 grand a month or a year.
00:12:49.300
And if I were to add on like an apprentice or something, it doubles.
00:12:57.320
Yeah, it's like you got to get, yeah, I just realized we have to get a policy in case anything
00:13:01.700
like an errors and omissions policy we have to get for podcasting now.
00:13:08.740
And EPL and I, or some similar type of policy that I just, that they just sent me something
00:13:14.420
It's like, I don't even know if I can afford it.
00:13:18.400
Yeah, once you start to, if you want to build something bigger or add more, more.
00:13:23.860
There's more costs and liabilities that are incurred.
00:13:27.320
And they say, you know, California is the hardest place to run either a small business
00:13:35.260
There's so many restrictions and so many fees and regulations that govern.
00:13:59.040
Well, it seems like you have like all the water pushing on the island.
00:14:02.900
It's going to push everything back up the toilet.
00:14:06.360
I mean, their infrastructure is, you know, significantly improved from way back those days.
00:14:14.220
But they have sanitary sewer systems, which is, which is the name for, you call it sanitary
00:14:22.080
I don't know why, because it's not fucking sanitary at all.
00:14:27.840
This pipe that leaves this building is called the sanitary sewer line.
00:14:43.020
I just thought we were like, on a damn fucking-
00:14:46.160
The exit of this building has one great big pipe that leaves it from all the smaller pipes
00:14:54.440
That pipe goes out to the street, which is a bigger pipe, probably 12, 14, 24 inches.
00:15:05.700
If you were to open up a manhole in the street and look down there, it's a constant stream.
00:15:15.340
And in my whole life of plumbing, 25 years or whatever, it's always been called sanitary
00:15:22.280
I think probably to give people a safe idea, just like, oh-
00:15:25.300
In case they see the pipe, they're like, oh, yeah.
00:15:32.380
So all that goes to a sewer treatment facility where they process and treat it and then release
00:15:40.300
the clean water into a stream and out to the ocean.
00:15:54.480
What if you made an ice tray cube of trays, like ice of it?
00:15:57.820
Would you put one cube, like, in a soda or something?
00:16:05.060
Bro, you got to get a little more polis in that, man.
00:16:07.980
I have been around enough turds in my life, man.
00:16:12.100
After, like, 11 years of that, I had to give up on the Roto-Rooter thing.
00:16:22.400
It's like, because every time if a plumber comes over, I don't know if I say shit, do
00:16:39.140
I knock on the door and everything, you know, Roto-Rooter, man, I'm here.
00:16:43.080
And he opens the door and he goes, thank God you're here, man.
00:16:48.680
And I go in there and he's got just water sprayed up all over the walls.
00:16:53.780
He's been plunging the shit out of this toilet for like an hour and making no headway.
00:16:59.960
And I take the dude's plunger and he goes, that ain't gonna work.
00:17:02.320
You're gonna need something way more than that.
00:17:04.240
And I put it in there and hit it like two, three times.
00:17:19.980
I feel like it's uncomfortable if you go into a place.
00:17:24.000
Does the guy, do you, like, does somebody be like, okay, I pooped in here?
00:17:32.480
Sometimes people are super embarrassed and they're like, I'm really sorry about it.
00:17:43.440
Right, put it on a paper or something, run it outside or something.
00:17:50.260
I mean, I've seen some rose petals in there or something, you know.
00:17:59.360
I went to her house probably three years, you know, constantly.
00:18:03.260
I was going to her house like every month, once a month, I'd go to her house and unstop
00:18:08.700
both of her toilets because I know this little graphic, but she would shit baseballs.
00:18:18.900
I'm not sure what was going on with her intestines.
00:18:21.440
We used to talk about it, the Roto-Rooter guys.
00:18:26.720
She's got the Walker Bueller colon right there.
00:18:34.040
I'm wondering, if she's shitting baseballs, how fast do they come out?
00:18:54.320
So if you can't hit it with a plunger, which these turds were solid, man.
00:19:01.700
And do you think she's eating something unique?
00:19:04.240
Whatever her diet is, is creating this like paste turds.
00:19:15.680
This snake would like go through the turd and just put a little hole in it.
00:19:18.780
And then once you pull the snake out, it's like the turd would close back up like Jell-O.
00:19:29.380
So you'd basically just have to run that snake back and forth and back and forth until you could break up enough of that turd to get the water helping it out to flush this thing all the way through.
00:19:41.200
That one would only go through the toilet, like four or five feet.
00:19:44.080
Just right to the – yeah, because the toilet will go down and then up and then down again.
00:19:48.180
And that's about three feet by the time it finishes.
00:19:52.020
Because if it's any farther than that, you need to pull the toilet off the floor and go after the pipe.
00:19:58.000
So at that point, yeah, once you do – after that three feet, you're going into –
00:20:04.920
Yeah, it gets a little more expensive after that usually.
00:20:08.020
And why does the pipe on the toilet go up and down like that after?
00:20:11.980
It would seem like a straight pipe would help out better.
00:20:15.800
It has to go down and up like that so water always stays in that portion right there.
00:20:21.260
Otherwise, you're going to smell shit coming out of the pipe all the time.
00:20:26.680
That water there prevents the smell from coming back.
00:20:30.220
Ah, so that's why it has that kind of snake, that S-curve.
00:20:39.780
It stinks, but it's up in – it's stuck in the top part of that pipe?
00:20:42.660
Well, anything downstream of that – where that water is smells really bad.
00:20:48.180
That water is what blocks the gas, sewer gas, from coming back at you.
00:20:52.160
You ever go into a building and it just kind of smells like shit?
00:20:55.700
Like the whole place smells like sewer and you can't figure it out?
00:20:58.740
Usually what that is is a dry floor drain somewhere because floor drains, even in the
00:21:02.680
bathrooms, they have that same P-trap in the bottom of them.
00:21:05.940
But if nobody pours water in them, that'll evaporate.
00:21:09.100
Here's a free tip for like everybody out there.
00:21:11.840
That'll evaporate and then you'll get that sewer gas smell coming in.
00:21:15.180
Oh, because it's coming in because there's no water there to block it from coming up.
00:21:17.860
So a lot of times you just – I mean so many times I'd walk into a building and I know
00:21:25.880
And then I'd just search around and find the dry floor drain, pour some water in there
00:21:31.800
So a lot of this probably over the years you learn these different ways of like, oh, okay,
00:21:36.360
instead of going through every pipe in the building the first time to the thousandth
00:21:40.880
time you come in, it's the smell, you find the dry drain, boom, and I'm done.
00:21:45.080
You know, after 20 years of experience, it pays tons.
00:21:54.260
So is there certain points where like do you feel – oh, I'll interrupt you about the
00:22:03.920
She just had wild turrets, man, and we used to talk about it.
00:22:06.240
We would never, you know, shame her or embarrass her.
00:22:10.720
We're sorry to, you know, give us a call when you need us.
00:22:13.820
We gave her a super discounted rate because she called us all the time.
00:22:18.560
And she used to give – the first lady that I married, the kid, the daughter that she
00:22:35.780
So after like three years of feeling guilty on stopping this lady's toilet every month,
00:22:41.560
look, on my day off, I'm going to come over and I'm going to install you two pressure
00:22:54.520
I jerked her old toilets out that were, you know, obviously not up to the challenge she
00:22:58.800
was putting on them and put in these – you've seen those –
00:23:04.580
Those jet toilets where you flush them and they just sound like a jet engine going off.
00:23:13.820
I mean, she did call us like a year later because her kitchen sink was stopped up or
00:23:17.360
But how many thousands of dollars did that just save over the lifetime of all that?
00:23:27.200
You help out where you can, especially if you notice those patterns.
00:23:29.840
You know, you're like at some point it does get to be like, oh, I'm – yeah, I'm
00:23:33.540
keep giving this person – this person keeps giving me business.
00:23:36.820
But at a certain point I can just be helpful or something.
00:23:39.440
You almost feel like you're robbing them after a while.
00:23:42.300
I like having that thing inside of you that feels like that because then it tells you when
00:23:56.900
I had five years in Alabama and six years in Tacoma and Seattle.
00:24:00.620
So when I got divorced in Alabama, I moved to Washington, which is where I was born.
00:24:12.460
I just feel like overall – Nick, will you just look that up?
00:24:17.420
Is Seattle what the difference in land elevation is?
00:24:23.640
For some reason, I always think of the south as being like a lower –
00:24:30.760
But when I was in Alabama, I want to say they were a couple hundred feet up where Seattle is –
00:24:36.320
I mean, there's water right there, right in front of you.
00:24:38.580
That water is sea level because it's the Puget Sound.
00:24:43.120
So, base elevation in Alabama, probably a couple hundred feet maybe.
00:24:48.900
I mean, elevation is like 500 feet above sea level.
00:24:53.200
Yeah, you got some hills for sure, but the lowest point, which is sea level.
00:25:03.620
Everywhere you're driving around, the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, and all the surrounding areas,
00:25:11.360
So, not elevation so much, but cold, rainy, wet, gray.
00:25:20.260
Like, is there a different type of plumbing going on?
00:25:23.160
Is there a different plumbing going on in the Pacific Northwest that we don't know about or something,
00:25:29.880
In Alabama, the rules – so, when I was in Alabama, they ran off the National Plumbing Code,
00:25:35.240
which is a book about three-quarters of an inch thick or so.
00:25:39.400
Got a lot of pages in it, maybe 100 pages or so.
00:25:43.620
Do what you want as long as it works, basically, and don't leak.
00:25:46.740
I moved to Washington, and they – as California does now, too, but back then, they didn't – Uniform Plumbing Code,
00:25:54.940
which is the gold standard, and that book is like this thick.
00:25:58.940
And it's got addendums and additions and revisements.
00:26:08.000
Once you get out here, there's so much paperwork and this and that, and you got to – and nobody –
00:26:12.580
if somebody doesn't want to work at all, you got a fee, you got to fucking buy them a hat.
00:26:16.480
You got to pay – taxes are more – all that.
00:26:18.520
The farther west you go, the harder it is on the working man.
00:26:23.800
So, they say Washington's the hardest state to get a license in for plumbers.
00:26:30.180
You'd think people would be doing a lot of shit in Michigan, and they would need more help.
00:26:44.200
You can't run a sewer cable through frozen shit.
00:26:49.020
Restrictions are different in cold weather climates.
00:26:53.000
I've never been to Michigan, but I'm going to guess that they're going to be somewhere similar as to, like, Colorado.
00:26:59.880
And all their shit's buried eight feet deep in Colorado.
00:27:21.000
And Louisiana, I think, is just right out the window, basically.
00:27:35.580
And, yeah, because I remember they had, like, a neighbor when I was growing up that they would just – they had, like, a shit line and just went off into the woods.
00:27:42.680
And then at a certain point, I remember we ran back there.
00:27:45.460
And when you're a kid, you don't know you think it's, like, a little river, like a little lake or something.
00:27:49.920
And so, yeah, people are jumping around, skipping rocks off of shit, just, you know, making little boats.
00:27:56.060
We used to make little school boats and, like, push them out into, like, this, like, kind of duty canal kind of just – I mean, you're a kid.
00:28:04.200
I'm not doing great, but I'm doing – this year, I'm feeling okay.
00:28:08.340
But generally speaking, throughout your whole life, are you a healthy dude?
00:28:17.580
And you got dirty every once in a while, and you didn't give a crap about washing your hands every single time you went to the bathroom.
00:28:23.960
Out here, like, everybody – I saw some woman get a bunch of hand sanitizer and wash her son's neck with it the other day when I was at the bank.
00:28:33.560
That kid's going to fucking get hit by lightning.
00:28:40.360
Just letting that alcohol soak into your skin like that?
00:28:43.760
Yeah, and just, like, at a certain point, everything has diminished – what is it called?
00:28:51.620
It's like, okay, you want to get so clean and everything, then fine.
00:28:55.100
You know, something small comes along, a breeze with a little bit of cigarette smoke in it, and now your kid can't fucking see for two years, you know?
00:29:02.660
Like, Carlin said some stuff years ago about, you know, you spend so much time washing this and scrubbing that and making sure you're so clean that when something real does come along, your immune system is not going to be prepared for it.
00:29:17.400
Yeah, your immune system's at, like, a four-star restaurant or something.
00:29:21.000
And then some little hitchhiker comes in, you can't fucking handle him.
00:29:25.420
You got to do something to kind of strengthen your immune system somehow.
00:29:29.480
And go play with some turds every once in a while.
00:29:38.520
When I was young, they had a kid in my neighborhood who used to make me bury his duty in his yard for him.
00:29:49.760
No, he would shit in his yard, and I had to bury it.
00:30:04.080
He drove a bass boat into an embankment in the middle of the night.
00:30:14.040
What's some, I want to know some good tales, man.
00:30:15.840
We got, we have some great video questions that came in for you that we'll get to in a minute.
00:30:18.920
And it, yeah, I want to know a tale from the, I found in Chifuncta right there.
00:30:34.160
And Chifuncta, how it got its name, it's a famous Indian river.
00:30:47.060
By the overpass, man, I knew a fucking kid who jumped off that overpass one time and fucking hit a boat when he fucking went in, dude.
00:30:58.900
We all prayed and we just knew God was going to let his body surface so we could take him out and give him a proper burial.
00:31:12.480
Mario Rufino traveling upstream at high speed just after midnight.
00:31:17.120
Man, what's he doing driving a boat in the dark?
00:31:24.680
It says Rufino was last seen at a bar right there.
00:31:32.440
But, man, I'll tell you, that boy lived at top speed from the moment I ever fucking met him, bro.
00:31:37.460
It was like the whole world was at, I mean, he was just at high speed, that kid.
00:31:42.080
You know, if you were to ask him right now, he probably ain't got no complaints then.
00:31:45.600
Oh, man, he, that guy, yeah, yeah, he didn't, I mean, I guess I was, he didn't believe in plumbing.
00:32:04.700
Mom and dad, I'm going to have some kid bury our poop.
00:32:11.300
What's some wild stories that happened out there, man?
00:32:19.320
Chicks trying to have sex to pay off their bill.
00:32:25.480
I'm sure you go in there and there's the opportunity for sex every now and then.
00:32:33.300
She, you know, she, it took forever for her to come to the door.
00:32:36.460
I still remember it because she was trying so hard.
00:32:40.000
You can tell when somebody's coming on to you, right?
00:32:48.700
But so if you don't miss them, if a regular dude doesn't miss them, it must really be
00:32:53.700
Dude, this chick answered the door in a very thin white t-shirt.
00:33:08.800
So I followed her up the stairs, staring at her ass the whole way up so I could plunge
00:33:16.080
And then she has me sit there for like 20 minutes, I bet, while she sings karaoke to me
00:33:32.220
She didn't even need to be wearing the t-shirt.
00:33:36.160
I mean, the shirt is so thin, you can see right through.
00:33:39.960
So, but the point was, I knocked on the door and I got there and I got no answer.
00:33:46.400
It took her like five minutes to come to the door.
00:33:52.160
I heard her at first, when she first came up, I heard her come to the door.
00:33:56.700
She saw I was an old fat dude, probably, you know, because you don't know what plumber
00:34:05.080
I'm like, so I called dispatch because at the time.
00:34:15.480
You know, hey, can you call this customer that I'm here at her house and I've knocked.
00:34:27.060
I'm like, now I know what the fuck she was doing.
00:34:29.120
She went and got all ready and put her makeup on and whatever else.
00:34:34.960
She was slightly a little bit on the heavyset side, but, you know, good looking.
00:34:41.040
It was morning, probably 10, 11 o'clock in the morning, you know?
00:34:43.460
Who cares what anybody's body's like in the morning, you know?
00:34:58.680
And at the time I was single and still, you don't shit where you eat, no matter what.
00:35:07.740
Or you don't fuck where you clean shit, because that's true, too.
00:35:15.080
Don't ever have anything to do with anything with work like that.
00:35:25.300
Once you put sex into any work equation, it all becomes uncomfortable.
00:35:32.460
That's why we go to separate rooms and touch ourselves.
00:35:41.740
Look, I promise you, the second me and him have any sexual interaction.
00:35:50.180
It is over, and I think you would agree to that.
00:35:57.920
But I hate, you know, it's such a, it could have been so.
00:36:04.680
Oh, she's singing like love songs and stuff and trying to like sell me her voice, basically.
00:36:16.380
She was trying to get me to nail her on the couch right there.
00:36:24.440
I had gone back downstairs to write the invoice.
00:36:32.400
And instead of writing me the check so I can go to my next job, she spends all this time
00:36:58.520
Something, you know, something softer than that, probably.
00:37:11.160
I had another lady in the same town grab my junk and come in and grab me and kiss me.
00:37:17.840
And I had to literally, I was married at that time, so I, you know, you said, hey, well,
00:37:26.140
Mostly, I'd be so scared, you know, we're in an age of lawsuits.
00:37:38.580
Say this girl kisses me and I throw her on the floor and just ravage her and we have a
00:37:44.040
And then I don't call her back and now she calls my company and says, he raped me on the
00:37:55.280
I mean, in hindsight, do you ever fantasize about having, having had a romantic instance
00:38:00.960
Obviously, the South African one kind of stands out.
00:38:03.540
If I could have gone back now being single, I, you know, I probably could have taken a run
00:38:14.540
Actually, man, I think I need a fucking plumber in my head.
00:38:23.280
We got to ask like how much shit is out there really?
00:38:26.160
And how much shit is, is, is the middle of the earth just filling up with shit all the
00:38:30.840
Like I say, it all gets processed, cleaned and then jumped back into the ocean.
00:38:36.580
That, the septic box is even more environmentally friendly.
00:38:46.120
It, it contains, it decomposes, it leaches clean water out into your yard.
00:38:52.100
And that's why you see those green lines in a lot of people's grass.
00:38:55.480
Cause that's where the septic tank leach field is.
00:38:58.140
And it makes the grass a little bit greener in those areas.
00:39:02.800
And does it sift the sludge or just a sludge builds up?
00:39:05.260
Cause really in the end it's very little solids, right?
00:39:11.940
If it is working, it has active live bacteria in it that are constantly breaking down the
00:39:19.400
Um, they sell this product called Ridex, but you can use buttermilk.
00:39:23.280
You can use cultured, uh, cultured buttermilk or cultured yeast.
00:39:26.920
I mean, uh, all these things work to promote the bacterial growth of your septic tank.
00:39:33.320
Bleach and other chemicals tend to kill the active bacteria that are doing the job.
00:39:42.880
You want to have like a little ecosystem going on.
00:39:46.860
My grandma and grandpa were, I mean, they had people coming over to their house, but
00:39:50.780
they lived in the same house for like 25 years.
00:39:53.180
And when the guy came, cause, uh, the law says when you sell a house, it has to, you
00:39:57.040
have to have the septic tank pumped no matter what.
00:40:01.600
So when the guy came to pump their septic tank after it had been buried for 25 years,
00:40:11.100
And if they are working properly, it's a beautiful, a true working septic tank will never have
00:40:20.000
It's a, it's a completely self-contained system.
00:40:22.160
If you do the right things to, you know, you can't just ignore it and let it build up.
00:40:30.540
Now, have you ever had to go looking for something that someone flushed that they needed
00:40:47.400
The boss calls me and says, Hey man, this, this lady.
00:40:49.860
And we know this, but it's one of our clients, you know, they got 1500 apartments in there.
00:40:54.740
Hey, she dropped her wedding ring down the toilet at the office.
00:41:13.140
So I go in the bathroom and I take the toilet off the floor and I give it a shake and I can
00:41:21.060
Cause if it makes it down the pipe, I got to send the camera down there and I got to basically
00:41:27.360
And then I got to chase something down like a snake with a hook on it to try and get it
00:41:35.180
How much is that upcharge with you when you get that cam out?
00:41:41.200
Obviously in this area, I think a camera is around $500.
00:41:45.740
So back in the day, this was like I say, 15 years ago, I want to say we would probably
00:41:55.940
I had the camera in the truck, but no need busting it out.
00:41:58.920
So I go to shake it and I'm like, it's in there.
00:42:03.600
I can hear the, the, the ring rattling around inside.
00:42:07.140
What a neat way to think about it instead of just looking.
00:42:13.860
I put the toilet back together and I go back into the office cause it's midnight.
00:42:32.160
For a, cause it was an overtime, like midnight thing.
00:42:40.580
Here, that same midnight charge would probably be four or five hundred.
00:42:46.200
From, from a commercial company for me to come and do it.
00:42:48.720
I don't care about overtime or late night or whatever.
00:42:52.040
Is there anything you notice about people like just in different areas going into different
00:42:57.260
Like, do you notice any difference in like people in different environments or anything
00:43:06.420
It, it's, I hate using the word liberal cause I don't really like that word, but.
00:43:21.180
There's a lot of labia out here, as I like to say it, dude.
00:43:28.460
The vaginization of California has taken place.
00:43:36.100
But then there's also beautiful side to it too, because, you know, the weather is so
00:43:42.400
There's so many great people that come here to chase their dreams, to do things like
00:43:46.680
there's, there's so many types of people, like it's tough, but yeah, it gets, this shit
00:43:53.500
It's tough, but it's also the best, you know, it's, it's the best, it's the best and the
00:44:00.140
But yeah, there's, there's that soft side of a lot of people, but also there's, there's,
00:44:08.080
And if you hook up and you meet with the right ones, then, then you can kind of get set here.
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Trying to get that little Christmas tree above my ween, because it's holiday time.
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When I was young, the plumbers came because my mom had been flushing coffee grounds on the garbage disposal and the little paper thing that was in the coffee pot.
00:48:29.140
She'd been, like, putting that in there just in the morning because it was easy.
00:48:32.640
And she was, like, do not tell the plumbers that I've been doing that or we're going to have to pay and the building won't have to pay.
00:48:42.320
And right when the plumbers came in, bro, I was such a rat, dude.
00:48:47.280
I was, like, my mom has been flushing coffee grounds and the paper things down the garbage disposal.
00:48:56.820
Fuck, man, I never even told anybody that until just now, man, but I feel so bad if I could throw my mom right under the bus, bro.
00:49:07.600
I think the plumbers knew that, like, she was a single mom and stuff and were like, ah, well, you know.
00:49:12.520
I've done that before, actually, where, you know, so you go to an apartment complex or you go to a rental, you know, a lot of rentals I'd go to, where the owner would say, hey, if the customer put something in there that they weren't supposed to, I ain't paying.
00:49:25.200
Like tampons or, you know, paper towels is a big one.
00:49:29.220
We get a lot of paper towels out of drains, baby wipes.
00:49:35.420
So if they get down there and they get caught on something, they're just going to pack up and other stuff's going to pack up on them.
00:49:42.240
You know, for years they would say coffee grounds is okay in the garbage disposal.
00:49:58.620
Your garbage disposal is for the tiniest little bits or whatever's left on your plate is what your garbage disposal was originally designed to do.
00:50:07.800
Chunk that stuff up, mix it with some water, and send it down.
00:50:11.720
Like if you're cutting the fat off of a chicken, like you're getting some chicken pieces?
00:50:15.320
I mean, if you've got one or two, get it in there.
00:50:17.480
But don't carve a whole chicken and throw all the extra stuff in your garbage disposal.
00:50:29.020
One lady called me because she stopped up her garbage disposal with a whole steak.
00:50:40.560
She got pissed off, and she threw the steak down the garbage disposal, and it didn't make it.
00:50:47.020
So, yeah, that uncooked meat won't go down, really, huh?
00:50:50.640
Well, I mean, it'll chunk up, but once it gets through there, it's just going to pack up.
00:50:53.940
Right, because it's that weird consistency at that point.
00:51:04.840
Tons of frat dudes, and they needed a new garbage disposal.
00:51:16.280
So, I get them this one-horsepower garbage disposal, and I put it in, and the head of the frat house is there, and he's like, is this a good garbage disposal?
00:51:25.800
And I'm like, they actually advertise this garbage disposal will chew up a beer bottle.
00:51:42.880
Like a week later, I had to go back to that same fraternity house, because all the pipes
00:51:49.420
underneath the garbage disposal and the whole main pipe underneath the house was packed full
00:51:57.900
Because they had a party that weekend, and dudes were going, watch this, and just dropping
00:52:05.220
Have you ever seen a gas-powered garbage disposal?
00:52:17.540
I wouldn't want to connect it to my sewer system, though, because that's just going to send too
00:52:24.200
Now, if you run out of drain oil and stuff, can you pour gasoline down your drain?
00:52:32.780
I guess, honestly, dude, sometimes I'm not even feeling good about myself as a person.
00:52:36.240
I'll go get a couple things of drain oil and pour it in all the drains in my place.
00:52:40.420
I think it just makes me feel like something's being done, even though I'm not feeling good.
00:52:50.940
Yeah, but I just like, I don't know, something about it's like, oh, man, I can't unclog my
00:52:55.300
own life, but I'm going to do my best on these drains right now, you know?
00:53:01.060
It's anything with hydrochloric or sulfuric acid, pipes are not designed to handle that.
00:53:06.740
It might eat through the clog, but whether it does or not, there's going to be some residual
00:53:14.020
I have grabbed pipes, solid cast iron pipes that people had used Drano on, and I can crush
00:53:22.960
Or plastic pipes that just have the whole bottom channel where the water runs, gone, just
00:53:31.340
It would be plastic piping right through some plywood, right through a hole in a piece of
00:53:36.340
You think getting a drain is unstopped, or you think getting a drain unstopped is expensive?
00:53:44.840
So you want to spend $20 on some Drano to try and save yourself $100 or $200 on a plumber
00:53:51.840
That Drano might cost you thousands in the pipe repair that comes down the road, or the
00:53:56.380
damage that the water leak will cause, because you're not going to notice it right away.
00:54:00.420
It's going to do some wood damage first, and some mold and rot.
00:54:08.640
And some of them might get the expensive one, the little gold bottle or whatever.
00:54:15.660
Boiling water with a little bit of vinegar in it keeps your drain smelling good, and it
00:54:21.160
Dude, what's crazy is in the morning when I get up, I get some warm water and put some
00:54:43.400
I don't want to say fresh, bro, because that's kind of a bitch word to use, but it makes me
00:54:58.100
Yeah, sorry, not straight up dye your hair vinegar.
00:55:05.300
She said it didn't taste very good, but it was supposed to be pretty good for your health.
00:55:11.680
I just read on there, though, that it relieves nighttime leg cramps, which is...
00:55:21.320
Damn, I fucking want some right now, dude, because I got on these compression socks because
00:55:28.100
What is the most complicated septic system that exists out there, or the most complicated
00:55:49.300
Usually, the most complicated thing I run into is when people try and they don't know what
00:55:55.240
they're doing, day before yesterday, for example, I went to a house where the guy called me and
00:56:01.700
said, this is going to be a big thing, but do what you can.
00:56:09.040
The guy couldn't put the toilet pipe in the center of the space where the toilet goes.
00:56:19.340
And he installed it over in the corner and he put the toilet on like a diagonal coming
00:56:29.060
Not only that, but he didn't use the right material.
00:56:40.540
And as soon as I start moving things and I get in there, I'm like, had this not have
00:56:46.220
taken place in the first place, it would have been so much easier for me to fix.
00:56:50.620
But that I have to undo the problems of somebody else and then recreate from, you know, basically,
00:56:59.920
I got to undo all this before I can go back to the beginning.
00:57:02.860
So, when it gets complicated is when somebody tackles a project they probably shouldn't have.
00:57:08.920
They should have just called a plumber in the first place.
00:57:10.960
Instead, if you get brave ideas to just kind of Lewis and Clark your fucking shit future,
00:57:15.620
change it up and hire somebody that knows what they're doing.
00:57:19.080
I mean, some of these companies, you know, I can't be everywhere, so you're not going
00:57:23.620
And some of these companies are not very cheap, but it is worth the money.
00:57:27.620
These guys have learned a lot over their however many years it took to be a professional
00:57:42.540
Bro, it's crazy because in my mind, I'm like, this guy is a toilet champion.
00:57:51.560
It was a plumbing supply store in Washington was having this contest.
00:58:01.860
Like everything is in the box that you need to put this toilet together.
00:58:05.480
And the contest, they had a barbecue and everything.
00:58:08.360
And they had like vendors there that were selling tools and stuff like that.
00:58:12.880
Whoever puts the toilet together in the fastest amount of time, you get like a trophy, you
00:58:25.980
So I get this little trophy with a dude holding a toilet up over his head, you know?
00:58:43.220
I kind of stick more toward the valley and Thousand Oaks see me.
00:58:47.060
But I mean, I'll move around where, you know, dude, I went to Cambria a couple of weeks ago
00:59:03.760
We got a question right here from a guy who has a beard.
00:59:05.840
Now, can you cut your hair and flush it down the pipe?
00:59:16.080
Have you ever found something in a pipe that you thought this person could be a murderer
00:59:44.300
It was just barely bigger than the size of your hand or so.
00:59:46.320
But fortunately for her, their sewer line was already stopped up.
00:59:54.640
So when she flushed it down, it didn't go all the way.
00:59:58.520
And a couple of days later, they had called Roto-Rooter.
01:00:02.260
And when I got there and undid the cap out in the front yard, the baby came out.
01:00:07.580
And I had to look at it for a couple of minutes because I've seen so many rats in pipes.
01:00:14.640
So a rat that has been drowned or it will lose all its fur, and it'll also be white and very small and have bones.
01:00:22.420
It was not dissimilar from that, minus the tail and all that.
01:00:31.440
Did you feel something like spiritually at that point at all?
01:00:35.020
I didn't know what was really going on at the time.
01:00:39.660
So I picked up the next tail and I called my boss.
01:00:42.860
Hey, Lamar, man, a baby came floating out of this drain.
01:00:46.980
I'm way out in the country, out in the middle of nowhere, you know?
01:00:49.240
And he goes, you pack up your shit, get in the truck and leave right now.
01:00:55.440
I packed up my, I didn't even talk to the lady.
01:01:02.040
The guy went to jail for beating the crap out of the lady.
01:01:09.300
But at least if you don't get called, you don't go there.
01:01:14.720
And maybe he continues beating the crap out of her.
01:01:18.220
It's almost like a little bit of a euphemism for life.
01:01:20.280
It's like you think you can put everything into the, hide everything inside of yourself or in
01:01:27.360
In our emotional drains or in the ground or wherever, but it all comes to the surface.
01:01:41.040
It was, like I said, it was so small and it had been in there for a while.
01:01:44.000
So it was already starting to kind of, and it wasn't fully developed and all that.
01:02:03.520
Dude threw it that way and it went right down the toilet.
01:02:10.480
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Let's go to this video question that came in right here.
01:05:33.520
I was wondering if it's true they call the day after Thanksgiving,
01:05:42.780
Busiest plumbing day of the year for service plumbers.
01:05:46.720
And that's just based on sheer volume of feces?
01:05:59.460
80% of it's going to be potato peels in the garbage disposal.
01:06:11.660
Yeah, potato peels, they just have that same consistency.
01:06:14.460
It's like a little layer of skin they can just gather up.
01:06:22.440
One year, I did 14 service calls in one day, the day after Thanksgiving.
01:06:27.240
And is it mostly shit related or is it like a mix of things?
01:06:32.760
Like I say, out of those 14 service calls, I think 12 of them were kitchen sinks.
01:06:40.240
And do you go to places where sometimes people are embarrassed?
01:06:42.960
Like they'll come in, but they'll never even look you in the eyes.
01:06:48.980
People have a lot of shame around feces and around shit.
01:06:52.180
So, it went beyond that because several years after quitting with Roto-Rooter, I started working for one of the largest luxury hotels in the world.
01:07:13.180
And those toilets stop up just like any other toilet.
01:07:15.440
But these people are fancy and they don't want to interact with the common folk who is coming to unstop their toilet.
01:07:29.660
For a specific one or for like kind of an area?
01:07:34.520
I worked Four Seasons in Seattle for three years as their overnight maintenance.
01:07:39.840
Drywall repair and painting and all this other, you know, whatever needed to be done.
01:07:43.800
Including, you know, all the building maintenance and handling guest room calls.
01:07:47.820
So, yeah, most of the time, if a guest were to call with a stopped up toilet, that guest would not be in the room.
01:08:03.160
There was some small occasions where they would be in there and they would just be in.
01:08:11.740
Have you ever had anybody, like, put on a mask or something so they don't see you?
01:08:14.960
Like, because people have so much shame surrounding, like, body, you know, activity and stuff.
01:08:25.020
I had one lady open the door with the robe and the robe was open.
01:08:40.640
Her husband pops around from the corner and he's like, yeah, it's okay.
01:08:50.560
Y'all trying to invite me in here for some freaky stuff?
01:09:06.020
I mean, if I just got to stand there and watch.
01:09:11.900
When you guys hire the toilet champion, you throw in $300, he'll watch you guys bone for
01:09:18.440
Look, man, I guarantee you somebody will hire you now to come do it.
01:09:35.400
Ooh, from Seattle, from your old stomping grounds.
01:09:38.840
And I will say before I play this one, we got more questions for you than we have in
01:09:45.580
But two-thirds of them were, have you ever had sex on the job?
01:10:01.060
Just wanted to ask Super Mario there if he, when he's cleaning out toilets, cleaning a real
01:10:06.820
nasty drain, does he glove up the hands or is he going raw?
01:10:16.100
He, you know, we worked on the river together on the boats and anytime he was cleaning the
01:10:22.560
shower, cleaning the toilet, he never gloved up the hands.
01:10:27.140
He said it was because he used to be a plumber and, you know, all plumbers did that.
01:10:31.000
I just wanted to know if Super Mario there did that and he'll probably try to lie to you
01:10:35.700
and say he didn't because you got him on the spot right now.
01:10:38.020
So just don't shake his hand when he goes to leave.
01:11:00.900
And still, if I don't have gloves, I don't give a shit.
01:11:08.080
I'm not trying to stick my hands in my face or on my eyes or shake hands with people or
01:11:17.780
So that was an everyday, four hours a day thing.
01:11:21.800
And the biggest thing that they teach you in cooking school is to wash your hands.
01:11:26.340
And such good cleanliness habits with your hands.
01:11:39.040
If you know you're going to wash your hands before you shake somebody else's hand or stick
01:11:51.560
I'm not trying to touch food right after cleaning out somebody's toilet.
01:11:54.800
I'll probably wash my hands three or four times before I do that.
01:11:57.700
You ain't going to clean out a shitter and then fucking polish off a thing of deviled
01:12:06.740
In the first five years, yeah, I'd go unstop somebody's thing and then go eat lunch without
01:12:17.840
When you're young, you can spare a couple years.
01:12:32.340
I'll fucking have a couple spare ribs and fucking half a turd for lunch, bro.
01:12:38.100
Now I got to be careful when I get out of bed because it's a ways down.
01:12:53.960
I would have just assumed, yes, they do wear gloves.
01:12:58.140
We actually had a message from someone you might know.
01:13:05.880
What's the biggest turd you've ever seen while plumbing?
01:13:25.880
What's the biggest turd you've ever seen while plumbing?
01:13:31.720
You know, it has to be the one I was talking about earlier, the lady with the baseball poops.
01:13:44.660
I'm going to have to get a hold of my friend at Alabama and tell him that.
01:13:56.000
Now, I mean, yeah, that was the biggest one while plumbing, but I was walking down the streets
01:14:03.780
I was plumbing a building, actually, and we were just taking it because we were commercial
01:14:06.920
plumbers doing high-rise buildings and kind of got out of that turd chasing business.
01:14:12.500
That's what they call Roto-Rooter, man, turd chasers.
01:14:16.340
So I got into the new construction, high-rise, clean pipe, no more dirty hands.
01:14:21.700
And we were walking downtown Seattle, headed to Whole Foods like we did every day to have
01:14:49.120
And it was just kind of like one of these, kind of soft-serve deal.
01:14:58.100
Homeless in major cities, shit on the sidewalks on purpose.
01:15:03.560
It's like they're, fuck you to society or whatever.
01:15:10.160
And I almost think like they're kicking back like, hey, I got a three-day turd built up.
01:15:16.700
And then we'll kick back and watch all these people walk past it.
01:15:21.120
And honestly, you can't fucking find entertainment like that.
01:15:28.200
Imagine laying just a real snake in the basket heater across the way.
01:15:33.440
And then you and your buddy crack open a couple natty lights.
01:15:44.640
So there was like foot tracks going away from it.
01:15:48.740
You know, it's interesting, too, because at a certain point with bodily functions, we become almost like animals in a way.
01:16:04.520
You know, and I think in hindsight, I never really knew why I did it.
01:16:07.560
But I think I was like scared that something was going to come get me.
01:16:13.600
You know, I don't think it was a choice that I was making.
01:16:15.680
I felt like it was a not involuntary reaction, but just something that was more in the animalistic DNA of me.
01:16:31.400
I get in trouble with my girl and my fiancee a lot for peeing in inappropriate areas.
01:16:41.620
Do you think that's any reason why you got into plumbing?
01:16:47.780
But drinking sometimes comes into play with the peeing on the floor or whatever.
01:16:56.580
On an ironing board in a hotel room or something.
01:17:04.700
But also, more to your point, like you're saying, kind of, every time I move into a new place, I got to pee on it.
01:17:20.260
Dude, my buddy's dad, when I was growing up, used to get on the roof sometime when he'd been drinking and he'd let us watch him piss down the chimney.
01:17:29.060
And then mom, they wouldn't know, we'd sneak up.
01:17:35.920
They just can't understand why you can't go use the toilet.
01:17:45.820
You're supposed to pee in the toilet, but you can also pee wherever you want.
01:18:04.040
The only bad vibe I get from it is from my fiance.
01:18:11.720
That's when you break out that trophy and say, hey, lady.
01:18:17.140
And the toilet champion's gonna do what the toilet champion is gonna do.
01:18:27.360
Get one of the kids when you go into the house and they're in there.
01:18:33.860
Because we didn't know that he was gonna call in.
01:18:39.340
Laskoski was on the lineup of just people that had called.
01:18:53.500
I got a job working at the same company as him, but for a very brief period of time.
01:19:04.740
Construction plumbers get laid off from time to time.
01:19:07.400
You hit a big job or whatever, a high-rise building.
01:19:09.700
When that building is over, a lot of those plumbers are gonna go on unemployment.
01:19:18.880
So my old man had a company he was working for, and they'll hire anybody.
01:19:23.340
It's barely better than minimum wage, but it's money.
01:19:27.060
So I went and worked for him for a couple of months.
01:19:34.040
And you guys must be pretty close if he called in.
01:19:37.380
I mean, since we've become adults, yeah, we're best friends.
01:19:43.340
You know, my fiance is probably my best real friend.
01:19:57.620
So for the young plumbers out there and plumbers apprentices and young men that are like,
01:20:09.380
Those young men can get from starting working from a company with a Roto-Rooter or a commercial
01:20:14.420
group, some outfit like that, how they can get to that next level of being now a toilet
01:20:26.900
Even though there's other expenses that come in, you know, it's nice to be able to have
01:20:34.520
You're going to piss in your own fucking yard, you know?
01:20:37.460
I got to work hard for it and I'm always out there hustling still.
01:20:44.140
The more work you bring on or create or that you're a part of, the more work there is.
01:21:01.860
So, to answer that, I would say to start, and if you're in your own...
01:21:08.220
I want to say pride in your own abilities or your own work ethic.
01:21:14.120
You know, how hard I work and how I want it to look is what drives people paying me.
01:21:21.080
They pay me because what I put in looks good and it works.
01:21:24.740
I don't charge a fortune, but I'm not the cheapest out there either.
01:21:28.080
I pick what works price-wise for me and I try to be as completely open and fair with
01:21:36.640
And that seems to work well, whether you're doing plumbing or carpentry or, you know, treat
01:21:46.000
Don't rob them and you'll get customers for life.
01:21:49.480
I've got people that call me from five, six, some 10 years ago.
01:21:56.760
You know, but they'll hold onto your number forever if you did them right.
01:22:03.320
If you're to ask how to succeed by yourself, treat people right and don't rob them.
01:22:11.000
What commercial plumbing companies are charging, I understand the overhead and the expenses
01:22:16.980
and the insurance and everything else and advertising and all that, but it's still,
01:22:21.260
you know, the owner is making money for doing very little.
01:22:29.960
So at some point you got out though, you started to do your own thing.
01:22:41.080
I'm just trying to get some of these young guys who may be curious about that sort of
01:22:44.100
stuff, how to get out of somebody else's toilet.
01:22:50.100
At least pretend yours is a bird bath for a little while.
01:22:55.520
But there's a couple other avenues like Angie's List and there's a couple other apps that
01:22:59.440
you can use that will send you work, but you have to pay for it.
01:23:03.780
So Thumbtack, Angie's List, there's a couple of others that will give you job leads.
01:23:10.240
But if you were to accept those job leads, they can be quite expensive.
01:23:16.040
So if the customer decides not to go with your price, then you're out that money.
01:23:22.240
And that bill started getting so expensive that it wasn't worth it for the return I was
01:23:31.560
So it ended up being, you know, a guy needs a new water heater, for example.
01:23:37.880
Well, yeah, I can put in a water heater way cheaper than they can put in a water heater.
01:23:42.420
But it cost me $100 just to tell that guy that.
01:23:46.200
And what if I tell him and he decides to go with somebody else?
01:23:55.160
If you're small time, really small time, and you're only doing the minimum bids, then it's
01:24:00.700
But if you're out there and you're trying to make it a business, Craigslist works pretty
01:24:05.020
well because it's $5 per post, and that's not very expensive.
01:24:09.960
And you get one job and you got your return on that.
01:24:13.220
And word of mouth, I think, is probably my best.
01:24:21.760
And I've been here a few years, so I have enough built up now that I rarely do, but I
01:24:34.040
And Gianni, everybody knows, is the beautiful little twink.
01:24:38.300
And I'm not sure he's a twink, but he is a nice young man who's on a new – he's an
01:24:44.940
actor, and he's going to be on a new television show called – what is it?
01:24:53.200
He was just in the sixth season of Power, but he has a new show that he's taping right
01:25:09.580
Have you ever seen kids – like, I knew we'd go over to these kids' houses, and sometimes
01:25:12.660
they would flush the toilet, obviously, and then use it as a little bit of a pool or something
01:25:26.640
We had this one kid, Small Alan, and he could fucking literally, bro, go all the way under
01:25:37.580
But, yeah, now in hindsight, as an adult, if I saw him in there, I'd be like, get the fuck
01:25:56.380
Have you ever seen any crazy somebody – a lot of tits?
01:26:11.620
There's a key right on there, and Nick will get it for you.
01:26:14.440
Today's episode is brought to you by Toilet Champion.
01:26:27.320
We got a couple more questions for you that have come in here from listeners, man, and
01:26:41.220
I'm out of Pittsburgh, Kansas, and I see you're getting on with the plumber, so I got a plumbing
01:26:54.300
The drain, it gets full, and I can't leave it running, you know?
01:26:59.020
So I'd like to ask the plumber, what should I do about that?
01:27:24.980
He gets it going, and then he's like, oh, shit, I'm trying to shave and stuff.
01:27:30.740
That's happened to every college house I've ever been in, and almost immediately, and then
01:27:44.480
He can either grab that stopper and pull it straight out, but sometimes they're connected
01:27:52.380
He has to reach behind there and undo that nut, pull the rod out, and then he can pull the
01:27:57.620
stopper out, and there'll be so much gunk and hair and nastiness on the bottom side of
01:28:03.680
You throw that in the trash, put the stopper back in, slide the rod back in, and tighten
01:28:11.740
So what's going on there is the problem is if he pulls the stopper up, it won't come
01:28:18.080
And there's a rod into the pipe, and the stopper is connected to that rod.
01:28:30.620
And you just undo it, pull that rod out to release that stopper and pull it out.
01:28:35.900
A lot of times what I'll do is I'll clean it all off and put the rod back in without
01:28:40.340
the stopper, and then just drop the stopper in.
01:28:45.940
It still works, but if you want to take it out, you can't.
01:28:53.200
That's a great question, and I hope that that's a fix for you, my friend, and I
01:29:01.820
And also, I was thinking about the reason why you're here today.
01:29:05.660
We thought about we just wanted to have just more people in the world.
01:29:10.080
You know, like, it's just more fun sometimes to talk to somebody that, you know, not having
01:29:15.100
to talk to like celebrity or try to get celebrity or just, it's fun to just, I don't know.
01:29:27.380
And what I want to say is, so you talked about putting an ad even on Craigslist every
01:29:33.800
Like our idea was just, we want to have somebody on.
01:29:39.440
We're trying to get an illegal alien to come on.
01:29:45.260
And because you put your ad out there, you are searching for business.
01:29:53.840
And we were just talking about like a toilet champion, at least website traffic.
01:29:57.800
Maybe it's not local people who can actually hire you, but it's going to blow up.
01:30:01.820
And I bet you'll get some TPW fans in the Valley hitting you up.
01:30:05.360
Dude, I'll drive out there and shit and call you.
01:30:12.320
But just the way that you put yourself out there and work hard, man.
01:30:17.420
Because you don't put that ad out, we don't even know about you.
01:30:19.920
And this has been an amazing, it's been an amazing time, dude.
01:30:30.100
It is the funniest thing that has happened to me in plumbing.
01:30:36.140
I wanted to introduce it, but I didn't want to step on it.
01:30:40.820
So, I moved, I transferred from Roto-Rooter, Alabama to Roto-Rooter, Tacoma.
01:30:49.020
That was just putting the toilet together and winning a trophy and a hundred bucks.
01:31:01.980
And the new dispatcher that gets hired is going to come on, on ride along with somebody.
01:31:07.660
So, she can kind of learn, or he can kind of learn what we do in the field, you know?
01:31:14.140
So, this girl, Nikki, she comes with me, and we go, you know, service.
01:31:31.860
Sometimes you get that buggy, you know, that lazy suit.
01:31:35.800
So, anyway, she's, we go on, you know, two, three, four service calls or whatever it was,
01:31:41.900
So, I have kind of a rare form of colitis, and my stomach can just blow up at any time.
01:31:54.140
But in all the years, even with bad guts and all that stuff, I've never used a customer's
01:31:58.840
toilet, because that, to me, is just bad etiquette.
01:32:03.720
But this instance, I had to use it, but I couldn't, because everything in the house
01:32:13.580
Everything, they needed their main sewer line unstopped, and I cannot hold this anymore.
01:32:25.340
I know when I really have to, when my eyebrows will start shaking, that's when I can't take
01:32:37.540
I grabbed a bucket, and I shat very explosively and very loud with her sitting in the passenger
01:32:50.120
Smelling and hearing every bit of what was going on.
01:33:01.320
You could tell she's not happy about it, but she suffered through it.
01:33:04.300
The worst part was that people still had the plumbing problem.
01:33:09.600
So after I finished blowing up that bucket, I had to leave it there and go fix these people's
01:33:15.580
plumbing for another 30 minutes, leaving her with the bucket of shit.
01:33:20.140
She got out for most of it and just kind of hung out outside.
01:33:22.340
You got to get out and get on your phone or something.
01:33:32.060
I rinse out the bucket and clean it all out and everything.
01:33:34.860
And we drive all the way back to the Roto-Rooter office in silence.
01:33:44.120
But so much chatter going on in y'all's heads, man.
01:33:54.660
She was my girlfriend for a long time after that.
01:33:58.240
That is fucking like Miracle on 34th Street, man.
01:34:01.220
Obviously, she didn't mind the smell of my shit that bad.
01:34:12.200
Man, that's crazy how the vulnerability of something brings people together.
01:34:18.380
I mean, could I have been more vulnerable in that situation?
01:34:28.780
And what did you tell her to look the other way?
01:34:31.980
Well, you know, in a service van, you got that bulkhead wall right behind the seats.
01:34:37.700
So, I mean, it's a steel wall, but there's holes through it.
01:34:48.660
She could probably damn near taste everything that's going on.
01:35:08.000
You look like Daniel, too, from our cartoons, doesn't he, a little bit?
01:35:11.720
You look like this kid I grew up with named Daniel, dude, who ironically used to drink
01:35:20.460
He'd put the hose in his mouth and then have you turn it on, even if it had been sitting
01:35:23.720
there all winter and take that first hose hit, bro.
01:35:33.460
He would go sometime and lay the whole hose in the yard, bro, on the hottest day and let
01:35:39.320
that bitch heat up for a couple days sometimes, dude.
01:35:44.700
Dude, he'll put it fucking right to the dome, bro.
01:35:52.640
You know, he just, I don't know, but unbelievable, dude, that you have bad plumbing in your body
01:36:03.420
And then I became a cook so I could like deal with it coming in and coming out.
01:36:10.160
Brad Likoski, the toilet champion of the Valley and maybe of the whole world, dude.
01:36:36.040
I'm so happy your dad got to be a part of it and just an inspiration, man.
01:36:44.160
I don't know what the time is, but we're going to pay you $500 for being here today with us.
01:36:50.500
A lot of our listeners are hardworking people, and we're just happy to be associated with
01:37:05.360
Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
01:37:14.840
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.
01:37:22.280
I can feel it in my bones, but it's going to take a little time for me to set that parking
01:37:34.560
break and let myself unwind Shine that light on me
01:37:52.740
And I will find a song I will sing it just for you
01:38:11.020
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite, and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll
01:38:19.700
be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to
01:38:31.420
And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.
01:38:48.240
Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker.
01:38:55.020
I'll take a quarter pounder with cheese and a McFlurry.
01:38:57.940
Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken.
01:39:04.700
Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is, tell everyone about Kite Club.
01:39:08.880
Second rule of Kite Club is, tell everyone about Kite Club.
01:39:13.640
Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.