Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Wanted: A Cheap, Fast, Low-Maintenance, Humble Plumber Who Doesn’t Talk Much

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I want to fire the company that has been doing my plumbing for like the last five or six years, what do you think?

They:

Charge an assload, for everything. (Including $1K for the recent replacement of a sink hose.) Recommend jobs that cost six assloads. (I can’t even bear to tell you.)

Want me to watch while they work they do that they think is cool. “This is going to be all asses and elbows!” the guy said while they put some kind of plastic liner inside my sewer pipe.

Have–and this is one of my very gravest concerns–hold music that sings to the tune of the Irish sea shanty, “What Would You Do With a Drunken Sailor,” “What would you do with a leaky faucet, what would you do with a broken toilet, pick up thee phone and call _ _, day or night or morning.” I am not shitting you.

Make their plumbers ask you, at the end of a gruesome job on a rainy Monday morning, to give them a five-star review and do a selfie with them (and your dog, sometimes?) for a dogfood charity, or some shit.

Screenshot

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And uncharge so obviously, every fucking time. A callback, an hour after the plumber’s gone: “We fixed your faucet. Did you have some water damage we could also repair?”

I’m sure you’re telling yourself right now: Murray is a fucking idiot. Of course he should fire that company. How hard could it be to find a less manipulative, self-regarding, marketing-driven corporate corrosion than this?

Except the problem is, Murray doesn’t know the answer to that question. For at least three years, he’s been part of the “No-Drip Club” with this plumber, which garners him an annual check-up (otherwise known as an annual upsell opportunity) and a 10% discount on the exorbitant rates of this plumber, which will always be needed to attend to his 1911-constructed home.

Poor Murray, would be my thought. Well, that’s my thought a lot of the time, about a lot of things. Still, my experience from my youth—when my parents constantly bitched about and put up with a plumber named Bill Hill who talked to them about their septic system and their sump pump and the “mell of a hess” that system was always in—tells me: Murray, this is how life is.

What’s your thought, wise guy?

Sales Mode: Monday Morning, Coming Down

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Someone sent me this picture yesterday, from my book talk a couple weeks ago at City Lit Books. It came at a good moment: on a rainy Monday morning, as I juggled a gnarly and unpleasant writing assignment, distracted by waiting for a plumber coming to fix a leaky kitchen faucet and dreading a couple looming weeks of mad and uncertain logistics. Life.

PICTURED: Don Evans, founder of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, me, my interlocutor John Lillig, a hero of Soccer Dad, and a pal. And Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer or Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King. Behind them, pretty much my whole life in Chicago. Holy shit.

Friday, I asked a friend what was happening in her world lately. Knowing what my life has been like lately, she said it felt like being asked by Jim Lovell what she’d been up to while he was away.

But ecstasy doesn’t play the long game; anxiety does. After a fantasy of a fortnight that included a trip to Ohio University to run a half-marathon with Scout’s soccer teammates and hang out with their parents and celebrate the journey we’ve all been on together, that’s ending all at once with their graduation next weekend—this Monday hit me like a dump truck from behind.

But the plumber did reveal that he has a five-year-old boy who might be a pretty good baseball player. Kid likes soccer, too. And the plumber likes to listen to Audible books while driving to jobs …

And while I was trying unsuccessfully to edit the misplaced, infuriating sorrow out of this post, this came in over Instagram, from a stranger:

In hopes that Soccer Dad starts to sell itself in this way, my sales campaign turns into a long series of conversations—at another Soccer Dad event in Chicago this June and in the lead-up to Father’s Day and on a September book talk at The Learned Owl bookstore in my hometown of Hudson, Ohio. I’m in touch with Scout’s college coach, and we’re going on at least one podcast together to talk about how parents and coaches can have better relationships. And I even foresee doing Zoom and in-person talks with groups sports parents, for as long as everyone is interested. And who knows what else?

But the book is writ. The book is out. The announcement is made. The party is over.

And officially, I’m in “Sales Mode,” no more.

To everyone’s relief, mine included.

Onto the next.