By my calculations the guy I rode with made about $450 in commissions that day while I watched and it seemed easy to do. When I got back from the ride along I spoke with the interviewer again and told him I’d like to do the work. He sent me for a drug test then had me meet with the manager and I was hired. They had me work with one of their experienced guys so I could learn how to do things and I had to attend the company’s plumbing school where they taught me how to install toilets, urinals, faucets, garbage disposers, and just about everything else you could imagine. The guy I was training under was a plumber but he did drain cleaning too so I received a lot of training in plumbing. In our state drain cleaning doesn’t need a license but the things they were teaching me sure did. I was told how to avoid the question of whether I had a license by referring to the company as licensed and insured and only using my first name and employee number.
I have a learning disability and have trouble being told how to do things or being shown how to do them I pretty much have to figure things out by doing. I was near the end of training and the guy training me told the manager that he was having trouble teaching me so they had me ride with another guy for a few weeks. This next guy used to sell used cars and he could sell ice to Eskimos. I learned a lot about selling jobs from him.
I few weeks later I had bought my van and was ready to hit the road. They told me if I ran into any problems all I had to do was call in a more experienced guy to help me. I was on the road working and making pretty good money taking home $800 – $1,000 a week. One evening I had a call that the house was backed up. I couldn’t find a clean-out so I snaked the line from a toilet that I pulled but the water didn’t go down. I was working in the town where the first guy I trained under lived so I called him to see why the sewer line didn’t go down when I snaked it. He told me that town does not have sewers and the septic tank is probably full. He said the person who owns the house would have a map drawn showing where the tank lid would be located and I should dig up the tank to be sure that the tank was the problem.
The customer had the map but I wasn’t sure how to read the map and dug a bunch of holes in the yard without finding the tank. I worked real late digging and never did find the tank. I told the customer that I’d return first thing in the morning and I’d bring the other guy with me to help. The next morning we arrived and he seemed to be a little bothered by all the digging I had done trying to find the tank. He quickly showed me how the map showed a measurement from the corner of the house and the corner of the deck where the two dimensions met was where the tank was and told me where to dig. A few minutes later I had found the tank and it was full. This customer needed to call another company to pump their septic tank.
He seemed in a hurry to leave and asked what I was charging. I told him that it was $400 for snaking from a pulled toilet, $50 for a gallon jug of drain care product and 4 hours of time spent digging trying to find the tank so they were looking at about $1250. He said just pay him an hour and that was all he needed and he left to go to another job. Later he told me that there was no way that someone should ever be charged that much for a full septic tank and said not to call him in on future jobs. He said to call the car salesman instead for help.
