Random acts of kindness

I love it when people are kind just for the sake of being kind. A week ago Friday (that's how long it has taken me to write this) we had a plumber come out to snake our clean out line. He got the snake to go through, but the flow wasn't what it was supposed to be. At one point he thought he was going to have to dig a trench and do all this extra work. That would have cost over $2500. He decided to first scope the line to see if he could see where the problem was. To scope the line it would have cost over $400--he did it for free. He found where the blockage was, but told us that he couldn't give us a location without charging us because he was then liable. Robert was out with him and after some talking, they figured out that there was a second clean out line. They poked around in the weeds and found the other clean out, reached inside, no more than 6 or 8 inches down, and pulled out a stick.

Rewind to several years ago. Our house was originally a one bedroom, one bathroom house (along with the front room and kitchen). The guy we bought the house from added on the back half of our house--the family room, master bedroom and bathroom, and the kids' room. When the plumbing was done it was done wrong. The plumbing in the new part of the house was higher than the plumbing in the old part of the house. Gravity doesn't work so well going up. We didn't notice a problem with the plumbing right away...it took about 6 months before we starting noticing the problems. Luckily, Robert was working with a guy that just happened to be a plumber. He was able to figure out what and how things needed to be fixed and he put in a clean out line. A couple of months later, Robert and I were planting our garden (the only year we have had one) and he came across another clean out line. At the time we really didn't think anything of it--our only thought was that we really didn't need that other clean out that we had just put in. We completely forgot about it until the plumber came last Friday. We figure that the stick has probably been there at least since the family that lived here before us.

The plumber had every right to charge us for the work he did, no one would have faulted him for that. But I am so grateful that he didn't want to hassle with the extra paperwork and so he only charged us for the work of snaking the line. After he saw how simple the solution was to our problem, he was also glad he didn't charge us for scoping the line and what not. I am always so grateful for the kindness of others =).