Some jobs are worse than others

A KBR plumber, standing in front of the female shower unit, stared disgustedly at me this morning as I stumbled through the deep gravel on the way to my office. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the object of his attention, but I went over to him anyway. I heard water dripping as I neared him. A female captain exited the shower building and said “Okay” and he said “Thanks.”

“Having a tough morning” I asked. “Is there any way you can get these folks to stop using the showers with no drains?” he replied with a scowl and a shake of his head. A number of our showers have no connection between the shower drain pan and the pipe to the gray water holding tank. The water just runs out on the ground underneath the building. When he works on the showers, he has to lay in the mud and hair and soap bits drained from the shower, and he was grumpy about it.

You’d think the shower user would notice that the shower pan just drains onto the ground. From the outside, most shower buildings have mud patches, indicating leaking water. Some of the patches are big, the size of a Lincoln Town Car, and have been there so long they’ve turned green. You can’t miss them. From the inside, the light shines up through the drain hole and you can see the dirt below. The plumber told me that he has put duct tape across shower stalls, but it gets ripped off and the shower used anyway. I told him to see the Mayor, who could put out the word.

Later, after breakfast, I saw the plumber lying on a piece of cardboard under another shower building. Water was soaking through the cardboard, but he was wrenching away, tightening some new plastic pipe. I stopped, bent over and peered at him under the building, and asked him “How do you think those pipes get broken? It’s not like folks crawl around under the building.” He described in surprising detail the plastic attachments of the pipe to the drain pan, and concluded “They just kick out the flange with their heels or something while they’re in the shower.” “Why would they do that?” I wondered. He told me, matter of factly, as if it were obvious “They’re just kids. They ain’t growed up yet.”