How to Use a Toilet

[Dubya]

So this afternoon I have to show a tenant how to the a toilet.

Not how to actually excrete, thankfully, but how to listen to make sure the damn thing shuts off like its supposed to. The reason being that this tenant has let her toilet run continuously for two months. My boss, the landlady, only learned of the situation when she got a $1200 water bill in the mail and started calling tenants to see WTF was going on.

I was over there yesterday to get the thing fixed and the tenant was nowhere to be found. I met her today when I went back there to do some painting. She didn't seem to be retarded. She had a thick accent,some sort of African accent. Maybe Im being uncharitable, and she just doesnt realize how expensive water is around here. Or I hope not, but mayne she just doesnt have much experience with plumbing in general.

Also at issue - the laziness of whoever installed the thing in the first place. The whole problem stemmed from a chain that connected one doohickey with another, and said chain having too much slack on it, with the slack catching on the second doohickey and preventing the tank from filling. Merely trying the thing out a few times would have made this problem plain, if whoever installed it couldn't see it coming.

This larger problem is symptomatic. You have ignorance, willful ignorance and/or personal issues combining with laziness and/or stupidity to create totally preventable problems, which, while fixable, take time away from getting anything useful done.

Lol, my summary of history.

Dubya
Feeling a little pessimistic today.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

We have the same goddamn chain problem in our house!

You should come visit, you'd hate it forever 

[Dubya]

Nah, I dont hate houses. Even old, decrepit houses.

I do hate fixing other peoples stupidity. That irks the hell out of me.

Urgh.

Ima go scrape some paint for a while and burn off some rage.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have made many a toilet repair in my time. If it's not one thing, it's something else.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, it may initially look like stupidity, but the chain has to have a certain amount of slack in it, and if there is too much slack (ie. enough for it to somehow wrap under the flapper, leaving it stuck open) it can take months of flushing before the exact right current condition happens to eddy it under such that it actually does so.

My one question is, if the flapper was stuck open, then the tank would never fill, and if the tank never fills, the toilet won't flush. So what was the tenant doing? Using a neighbor's toilet?

[Dubya]

That last bit was what got me. She wouldnt talk much to me, being as I represented Authority, but I get the feeling shes breaking the rules somehow. Late on her rent, extra people staying there, something, and didnt want Authority over there.

But its still stupid. I know next to nothing about plumbing and I had the thing fixed in minutes

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That last bit was what got me. She wouldnt talk much to me, being as I represented Authority, but I get the feeling shes breaking the rules somehow. Late on her rent, extra people staying there, something, and didnt want Authority over there.

But its still stupid. I know next to nothing about plumbing and I had the thing fixed in minutes

I know quite a bit about plumbing, and I don't think I like you. You're too eager to find small, spurious excuses to feel superior to other people.

[Dubya]

No, I wasnt saying all that to say look at how smart I am.

I was saying that because having been in similar situations with landlords, I could see that as at least a half-assed explanation of why someone would live with a barely working toulet for two months. I say half-assed because when I looked at the thing, the solution to the problem presented itself as soon as I began monkeying with the parts. It took no actual thought, just moving stuff around.

If this lady had done that, the thing would have worked for a while. If she had further thought about why the chain was catching, she would have seen, as I did, that she could have shortened it and not have the problem anymore. But instead, inexplicably, she chose to do nothing, creating a situation where I had to
waste an hour and a half in travel time to do a few minutes work. An hour and a half that could have been put to much better use.

I don't think raging on that is spurious.

I was going to say I dont go around looking for excuses to feel superior, when I realized that I cant back that up. Ill have to watch myself and see. Call me on it if you notice it again, will you?

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

It might be that you're assuming that what looks like an easy fix to you is an obvious thing to people without your experience? I mean, I found the problem at our place but only after months of us not really knowing what was up with the stupid toilet and "jiggle the handle" sounding like a rational response to it.

[Dubya]

 

Ill have to play with that idea some.  Reminds me of Zen and the art of motorcycle maintanence where the guy was talking about the mindset you need to have in troubleshooting machines.

Specific knowledge doesnt really transfer between technologies  - knowing how to rebuild an engine doesn't mean you know how to fix a leaky roof. But the mentality might. The idea that every part of a machine is there for a reason and if you can figure out how its supposed to work, then you can figure out which part is the problem.

To someone not in that mindset, I guess any broken machine would be a mystery.

I wonder how long Ill be able to keep that particulat bias at bay.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thing is, it is altogether easy to say "the person who installed it was an idiot" because the chain was too long (not necessarily the most likely scenario for a variety of reasons you will eventually discover if you continue doing maintenance). It is altogether too easy to say "the tenant is stupid" because it did not occur to the tenant to look inside her toilet to see what the hell was wrong with it.

Of course, you also mention that the tenant is perhaps from Africa. I don't know if you've ever traveled anywhere that wasn't up to Western standards for plumbing, but unless you meant a chichi part of South Africa, odds are where she came from the plumbing (if any) is ALWAYS fucked up. For that matter, even people who grow up in America don't always think to look inside a toilet to see what's wrong with it.

I dunno, I am as prone as anyone else is to dismiss all other human beings as stupid. I just think it's kind of a bad habit that comes from a personal insecurity that makes us want to go "At least I'm better than THAT idiot".

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Enjoy your toilet adventures. And just so you know, there's always more wrong than meets the eye.

[Dubya]

 

[minuspace]

JIGGLE THE HANDLE :Lulz: