A very loyal client who happens to be of Asian descent, and a pastor to a large Chinese church rang me in a panic last Thursday about how he had put a new mixer tap into a basin in one of his rental properties, but had caused a leak to one of the pipes inside the wall. I was slightly perplexed how he could have done this but told him that I would call him in the afternoon when I had finished my other booked jobs for the day and fix up … his stuff up. He advised me that he was flying to Singapore the next day and if it was possible for me to come that afternoon.
Anyway, I rang later that afternoon and the client said ‘Bec, Bec, Bec, you are my super hero plumber. I fix myself though. I been to Bunnings and I fixed leak.’
I was thankful that he was out of strife but I was also doubtful. And what do you know on Saturday morning, his wife rang me to tell me that water was going everywhere in the bathroom.
I was unable to get there until Monday and was told the leak wasn’t too bad. Upon arrival, the basin mixer flexes were higher than the basin shaped like an ‘s’ to connect to the copper water pipes. All that had been leaking was a compression fitting on the hot water side. The client hadn’t tightened it enough and so when the basin tap was turned on, water sprayed out of the fitting.
I joked with the client’s wife that the husbands always say they have ‘fixed it’ and then the unexpected happens and their ‘fixed it’ was never really fixed at all.
It was an easy job, one that I could laugh about later and I still managed to live up to my name as a ‘superhero’ plumber.
