Thursday, September 07, 2006

Repair men and "new" toilets

Today was scheduled to be a landmark day at our school. We were supposedly getting new toilets. The apartments here are fine and dandy. The only problem (and it's a problem in every apartment) is the toilet. There's just so many small things wrong with the flush handle and all that stuff that it basically just makes for a totally broken toilet. Well we received the joyful news yesterday that they were trying to get us new toilets and that the repairmen would be coming by this morning. So at 8:45 there's a knock on my door and in come the men. With just a wrench. Hmmm, that's an interesting looking new toilet. Anyway, previously my toilet flushes by picking up a hanger that is tied with a ribbon to the plunger in the tank. The plunger comes up, letting the water do its thing, etc. Then you kind of flop the hanger around (makes me feel like I'm fisihing) until the plunger covers the hole again because the plunger isn't actually attached to anything, it's just sitting in the tank on the back of the toilet. Well they took the hanger off the ribbon and tied the ribbon to a new flush button. In the states the flush handle is on the side of the tank, but here it's a button on the top of the tank. The idea is the same, though. You push the button, with moves a lever, which pulls a chain, which raises the plunger to let the water out of the tank. So now I have a button attached to a lever attached to a ribbon attached to a plunger. But the plunger isn't attached to anything so it can pivot. So when you flush you have to pick the whole lid of the tank up to "fish" the plunger back into position. So then the men leave and I'm thinking that this is perhaps the best new toilet I've ever seen except for the fact that it's not new and it still doesn't work. Well about 15 minutes later they come back to attach the plunger to something, I don't know what. So now you can sort of flush my toilet by actually pushing a button instead of pulling on a hanger. I know you were totally wondering about that, too.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sweetness.

Rachel said...

any stories having to do with toilets or the bathroom are usually pretty entertaining. this one was no exception. thank you.