Why I hate my apartment...

I hate my apartment for a veritable plethora of valid reasons. I'm working now on a humor collection to capture all of these reasons in the most comedic manner possible. Here is just one of them.

The Sewage-drenched Laundry Room Fiasco

I moved into the apartment a few weeks before Shane. Shane only lived about forty minutes from the place, and seeing as how I lived six hours away and desperately needed to find a job before the fall semester of college started, I moved in as soon as possible. I spent the next few days doing the regular unpacking thing and gradually began setting up the house to my liking. It wasn't long after this that I encountered my first problem. The kitchen sink was clogged. This was no big deal. The sink was not fully clogged, it would just take liquids 90% longer than most sinks to fully drain. The solution seemed very simple and would be found in a small bottle labeled “drain-o.” After pouring the bottle down the sink, I noticed that it did not even try to force its way down the pipe. I glanced back at the bottle which read “unclogs or it's free.” Thinking logically I realized that the fat-cats and the drain-o corporation would never levy such a claim if their product didn't work. I was overwhelmed with confidence that my sink would be defeated thanks to the smiling sewage pipe on the bottle. After a few more minutes of realizing that this wasn't working, I called up my landlord to let him know about my discovery. The house had to be 100 years old and for all I knew no one had lived in it for decades. Who knew how long that sink had been clogged for?
Tennerd sent over his best man to take a look at the sink while I left the house to go job-hunting. When I returned a few hours later, I found that the sink was still clogged. After another call to my landlord he assured me that “it was all taken care of. He went over earlier and put some drain-o down there.” I assured him that this was not the answer he was looking for as I had tried the same solution myself. To this information he replied “well, damn. I'll send him back over with a snake.” After laughing comically at the thought of an actual snake devouring the sewage blocking my pipe, I turned to find the plumber entering the apartment.
At this point I'd like to pause for a brief aside and explain some of the details of the kitchen. It was a rather large kitchen with a center island housed roughly in the center of the room. Directly across from the sink was the closed door to the vacant laundry room. All the hook-ups required for a washer and drier were present including the mammoth electrical outlet for the drier and the uncovered drainage pipe for a washer.
“Hey there, guy. My name's Steve, one of Bob's maintenance guys. I guess the drain-o didn't do the trick for the sink then, huh?”
“Guess not. I tried that myself, it must really be clogged.”
“Not a problem, I brought a plumbing snake to take care of it.”
Steve seemed like he was reasonably on the level. He was dressed roughly the same as Tennerd had been when we met him which was actually how I expected and hoped he would be dressed. Let's be honest, who the hell wants a spotless maintenance guy? Maintenance guys shouldn't be afraid to get nasty-ass dirty and I was glad his ensemble reflected this with none of the offensive smells that often emanate off others. Steve began unpacking a large, black toolbox and opened up the doors beneath the sink. The floor beneath the kitchen sink was badly warped and damp, which I noted was probably the result of the very slightly leaking pipe connected to the drain.
“So, where ya from there, guy?” Steve asked, while assembling his pipe snake and simultaneously working to lift up the cheap plywood covering the floor.
“Philly. I'm up here for college. Only got one semester left.” I replied, carefully watching Steve's actions. He had the snake assembled and the floor lifted up. At this point he was fumbling with a large wrench to disconnect the drain from the pipe.
“Oh cool. I've been down there a few times. In fact my brother married a broad from Philly and – son of a bitch!” Steve heaved at the wrench and smashed his hand on the side of the wall as the pipe disconnected.
“Shit, are you alright?” I hurried over from the door to the laundry room.
“Yeah I'm fine, that just hurt a bit. No harm done.” Now that he had the pipe disconnected, the next task was forcing the snake down the pipe. I returned to the comfort of the laundry room entrance to lean against the door frame.
“So anyway, he married that Philly broad and then moved back up around here because they didn't like the idea of living in a big, dangerous city.” Steve had the snake down the pipe and turned on what appeared to be a pressure washer connected to the end of it. Steve assured me that this worked perfectly every time. He explained that there was a small rubber bubble at the end of the snake which expanded to completely seal off the pipe and then the pressure washer engaged to force all the waste out the other end of the pipe because it had no where else to go.
“Yeah I don't much care for the city either, which is why I moved – hey is that normal?” The pipe started making loud growling noises and shaking violently.
“Oh yeah that's fine, the pipe is grounded in here pretty well, it's just the pressure building up. In just a bit here it'll shoot out the other end and your drain will work just fine.
“Anyway they said that after her friend got mugged in the city they didn't feel safe and-” As Steve was speaking a whole lot of nonsense that I didn't care about I heard a loud rumbling sound emanating from behind my post at the laundry room door. To give a viable comparison as to what this noise sounded like, imagine what Indiana Jones thought when he began running away from that big-ass boulder in “Raider's of the Lost Arc.” I turned around just in time to watch 100% of the contents of my clogged-sink erupt in a violent hell storm of putrid-smelling sewage out of the drainage pipe to the absent washing machine. I watched the contents spew out in a state of shock for several seconds before reacting. I quickly scrambled out of the laundry room and darted over towards Steve who was still balls-deep in a story about his sister.
“-and decided they better move away before something horrible happened. God-forbid, and-”
“Steve, are you not hearing this?” He looked up at me in confusion.
Still in a state of shock, I muttered out the words “Shit” and “laundry room.”
Steve listened carefully until he could hear the volcano and dashed over to shut off the snake. We both stood at the entrance of the laundry room and watched what was left of the obstruction ooze out of the pipe, tainting the carpet and surrounding walls of the pipe.
After what seemed like minutes of staring in disbelief Steve uttered the words “Well, shit. We probably should have capped that, huh?” We? I was just the naive college student who didn't know the first thing about plumbing. I didn't even know the drain from the kitchen connected to the drain from the washing machine.
“Yes?” I mumbled.
“Well, I'll go get a cap for that pipe and a carpet-cleaner and we'll take care of this no problem!”
I had to hand it to Steve for looking at the situation so optimistically. Hell, I'd have cursed for fifteen minutes before sitting in the corner with a coloring book for the rest of the afternoon.
Steve returned shortly after, capped the drain pipe, cleaned up the smelly-mess and situated himself back on his knees under the kitchen sink.
“So, yeah I really like it up here. Things are a lot different than they are down in Philly. For one, all the leaves turns a beautiful set of red, orange and yellow in autumn.” I chuckled to myeslf and restrained myself from muttering “no shit? They don't have autumn in Philadelphia.” Steve continued to fiddle with something on the end of the pipe snake, seemingly making pressure adjustments. Seconds after these adjustments we heard a loud grunting sound, followed by what sounded like perfectly flowing water.
“There's your boy!” Steve announced in enjoyment. I half-expected him to slap his knee and scream “hooooooo-eeeeeee!”
“Excellent, that sounds a lot better.”
“You bet, now I'll just get this snake outta yer way and I'll be outta here.” He began loosening something and began tugging on the end of the snake to get it out of the pipe.
“Yeah I know they have autumn everywhere but the colors up here are just gorgeous. My mom comes to visit every fall to come take a lot at what she calls 'foliage.'”
“Yeah, I've been up here a few years for school so I know how pretty it gets in the fall.”
“Oh that's right! You're a college boy! What are ya studying?” Steve tried making some more adjustments before apparently realizing that the snake was stuck.
“Well, I'm a writing major.”
“Oh cool, I've always wanted to- mother fucker!” Steve bashed his hand on the wall again as he attempted to free the pipe snake. I didn't bother asking if he was alright this time. In fact, I listened to him curse, fume, roar and scream at the pipe for the next forty-five minutes before he finally freed the bloated snake, cleaned up the mess he made and made his way out the door.