Roto Rooter
When I was attending St. Louis University, my wife and I lived in a furnished dormitory apartment. Returning from class one day, I was dumbfounded by what I saw when I entered the apartment. Much of the living-room furniture had been rearranged, and the rug was draped over and into the kitchen sink. In fact, part of the rug was down inside the drain. I tried to get it out but finally had to admit defeat and seek help.
As I was waiting for the elevator, my next-door neighbor appeared, and I told him about my strange predicament. He looked puzzled for a moment, then began laughing uproariously. He took me into his apartment, where I was confronted by three worn-out maintenance workers who were trying to unclog his sink. They had fed a plumber’s electric snake down his drain to clean out the pipes, but apparently the spiraling bore had made an immediate U-turn, come out of our drain, traveled across our apartment and snagged our rug.
Convinced the pipes were free of obstruction, the workers had reversed the snake, and our rug was dragged, along with our furniture, into the kitchen. The workers had been trying to pull it through all morning.