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With the deaths of both of my parents in the last couple of years, I've had lots of thoughts triggered by consideration of my own mortality. Some of them important, life changing thoughts (e.g., what useful things have and will I have done here) and others such as this...
You live, you die, what is left behind?
At some point in life, one of the things you should have acquired is a list of good trades people. I'm proud to say that at age 39, I have finally gotten a good list, including a great cpa, lawyer, doctor, nutritionist, realtor, piano tuner, electrician, floor guy, carpenter and plumber.
As for the plumber: I was recently visiting a friend who told me about the world's greatest plumber; I asked for the name, she said she couldn't tell me but after asking again she said ok but I had to promise (a) never to tell anyone else about them and (b) don't even tell the plumber where I got his name. I thought this was not just a little bit mysterious.
Just as she was about to hand me the paper with the name scrawled on it, I must have been wearing a slight smile, as she then yanked the paper out of my grasp and said "I MEAN IT!" so I retreived the solemn face and promised to keep the identity of the world's greatest plumber a secret.
The next day I called the world's greatest plumber to setup an appointment.
When the nice office lady answered and took my name and number, she said politely "are you a previous customer" and with sweat on brow I said no. She said "where did you get our name" and I said "the person who gave me your name told me she would inflict bodily harm on me if I told you" and she said "ha ha ha, where did you get our name" and in a moment of weakness, I blurted out the name of my friend. (Had I been more prepared, I would have said something like "my wife got your name from someone, but she is not here right now".)
The nice office lady said the plumber would show up tomorrow at 9am.
The next day, at 9:00.00, my doorbell rang, and there was a plumber. He looked polite and confident, and when he came in the door, he took a second to put paper booties over his Timberlands, so that he would not mess up my floors. (I guess he didn't take time to notice that we dragged mud over our floors all the time. Please don't tell any of my friends from superior cultures that we don't yet enforce the no shoes in house rule.)
I won't bore you with the details of my private plumbing problems, but let's just say that these plumber guys were very good.
I also could not help but notice that the plumber's pickup truck did not have their company name or phone number. Apparently these guys really pride themselves on responsiveness, and as such, they really like to just keep taking care of their existing customer base.
So if you are a close Boston area friend and need a good reference for one of the trades listed at the top of this page, just give me a call. But don't even think about asking about the plumber.
Update 04mar03: well, our great electrician just called to let me know that he's not going to be available for a while. He is in the US Army Reserves and just got the call today. He's shipping out to Iraq in a couple days, and they told him to plan for a 1-2 year deployment. He has children ages 3 and 5. War sucks. This is so scary and horrible. :(
Update 05aug03: I'm now trying angieslist for $57/year, since I'm trying to find some good service people for my Dad's house (a different area than my house). I will maintain feedback.
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