Tuesday morning we got up early to do the final site visit on a doctor’s office that was getting ready to open. We met the contractor, a good ol’ southern Georgia boy who didn’t speak a lick of English. I mean, he spoke English and nothing but, we just couldn’t understand a thing he was saying because he talked like Hank’s buddy, Boomhauer, on King of the Hill. “Wut wees got hisah sitasian witta cold w’er pipe anuh pipe fitens werdehuh comes’geter anuh recon dersuh dri-dri-drip…”
We’d nod our heads and smile but we didn’t know what the hell was going on.
The site visit was very uneventful for the most part until the end when we had to climb into the attic to see if they’d installed the fire sprinkler piping correctly. I wasn’t anticipating that part of the operation so I had left my headlamp in the car (that’s right, I travel with some of my tools). My boss was like, “Oh, it won’t matter, I have a flashlight,” but all he had was a dinky little mag light capable of producing a beam of light the size of a quarter. So next thing I knew I was climbing around the rafters of the attic in the pitch black like a blind monkey or some shit.
I would just see this little light flicker every now and again and he’d be like, “Can you see the sprinkler piping over there?”
“No.”
“How about now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“Dude, I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing but I can’t see my hand in front of my face. For all I know I’m hanging upside down right now. Next time just let me know we’ll be doing this shit and I’ll bring my night vision goggles.”
After that we took a lunch break at my favorite neighborhood bar and grille, Applebees. When the waitress took our orders she said matter of factly, "This is just stress."
We both looked at her like, "What???"
"This," she said, indicating to her left eye, which was blood red with a broken vessel. "This is just stress. I just wanted to let you know so you didn't think it was something else."
Well, truthfully I hadn't even noticed but now that you draw my attention to it I don't care if it's stress or eyeball herpes, it fucking grosses me out and now I want to throw up.
That afternoon we had to do a plumbing survey on the energy plant for an entire hospital, so I spent 5 hours crawling around massive 4000 gallon boilers, 1000 ton chillers and 1250 kw generators trying to trace water and fuel oil piping that had been installed in 1978 and modified a hundred times since then. The place had dozens of different rooms, each with 6 entrances and 8 exits and no real discernible way of knowing which went where. I felt like I was wandering around some secret level in Zelda1.
After spending the day crawling around all that crap in rooms with huge signs that said stuff like, "CAUTION: Hearing Protection Required," or "DANGER: Hazardous Chemicals," or "Do NOT Enter This Fucking Space Without Safety Glasses," all without hearing, eye, or acid waste protection, I kept thinking, "Dammit! I'm a grown man! Why am I crawling around on my hands and knees in this godforsaken place just following a bunch of pipes around? Can't we give some 6 year-old a bunch of transformers to do this shit for us? In fact, I just met a kid at the airport who would do all this for a couple nudie magazines."
At one point my boss was literally army crawling through a bunch of weeds outside the energy plant trying to determine the location of the underground piping. When he emerged he had a huge beetle crawling across his ass. I was a micro-second away from instinctively swatting the thing off him before I realized what the hell I was doing. There was no way I was going to risk a sexual harassment suit for smacking my boss’ ass. No way. Had it been any one of the girls in accounting I wouldn’t have hesitated; but not my boss.
So I was just like, “Uhh… dude, you have a beetle.”
“A what?”
“A beetle. You have a beetle there.”
“Where?”
“Right there.”
“Where?”
“Uhh… there. In that general region. Crawling all over… Listen, I’m just going to go into the next room and let you handle this on your own.”
The day ended with us crawling through the tunnel that connected the energy plant to the hospital and held all of the water, gas, and electrical piping. This thing was never really intended for normal sized humans to traverse yet there we were, pitch black, among the rats and spiders and roaches. It felt like we were in World War II Nazi Germany holed up in a bunker 50 feet below the earth’s surface with the Allied Forces relentlessly bombing us above. I was prepared to turn the corner and stumble upon Hitler all curled up in the fetal position clutching his teddy bear and I’d be all like, “What’s up motherfucker,” then I’d kick him in the throat and rip that stupid mustache off his face2,3.
To be continued…
1. Does anyone remember what the hell the point of that game was? I’m sure it was to save a princess or someone that had been captured but really, did anyone ever finish that game? Ever? I have a ton of memories of playing that game. So many in fact I feel like I must have spent a solid year, year and a half doing nothing but Zelda and I don’t think I finished 10% of that stupid game. The problem was, there were more secrets embedded in that game than the actual game itself. Like, if you weren’t so obsessed with finding the magical fairy in the swamp by playing the flute while standing on the fifth lily pad from the left, you could have finished the game in like 45 minutes. I know I’m going on about this like I hate the game, but honestly right now I’m really jonesing to play some fucking Zelda.
2. Truly Hitler would have deserved a whole lot worse than that and I’d like to think that had I run into him I would have had the energy to work him over with a lead pipe for a good two to three hours but at the time I was pretty tired so that’s all I could think to do.
3. Speaking of mustaches, anyone seen the cover of the new Rolling Stone? My boy, Brad Pitt, rocking the badass mustache? Don’t be surprised next time you see me…
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