Drain man

Yes, Cloyce was a poor excuse for a drain cleaning expert. I do believe that I ought to offer you one example of exactly how bad he was.

Often drains will have an access known as a riser outside of a house. This allows a plumber to cable a line without going into the building. It also avoids a trap, a sharp turn which can be difficult for a snake cable to navigate.

Cloyce arrived at a job and located the riser. He then began to snake the drain. He pulled out a small rug. He pulled out a wig. A garden hose came out of the line next, to be followed by a bed sheet. Several items of clothing found their way to the end of his cable. Soon he had a pile of various items and debris about three feet high laying in the customer's back yard. I know this from what another plumber who had by then arrived on the scene told me.

Cloyce had manged to go backwards through the riser (an impressive feat in an odd sort of way, truth be told) many times. His cable had burst through the cap on the line inside the basement of the house. Each time he ran the cable through he pulled out whatever in the basement engaged the cable. Yet he never once imagined that something might be wrong. He simply kept going back at it, figuring that eventually he would get everything out of the drain and that it would run just fine.

The inside of the basement, checked by Cloyce and the second man after that guy's arrival, found a basement nearly devoid of anything but with bits of paper stuck all over the walls. They had been ground up and thrown onto the walls as though avant-garde decor.

Yep, Cloyce was not a good drain cleaner.