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I love the smell of sewage in the morning….

As a commercial property manager in a high-rise building, not a day goes by where I do not have an opportunity to address a special challenge.  Last Friday was no exception.

We have one of our rather large tenants working on a complete remodel of their floors.  They are moving people around, building out a floor, then moving people back on to the floor.  It takes a lot of coordination, patience, and some good contractors in the mix to make it all happen.  This past Thursday night it seems the plumbing contractor was not really one of those "good" contractors we all hope the tenant selects to work on their project.  You see, it seems that on one of the floors about in the middle of the building, there was an issue with a stopped up toilet.  Now, this is not a new or novel occurrence in an office building - it happens all the time.   However, for some reason, this clog was particularly nasty and the plumber used his skills to try to unstop the clog.  When that didn't work, he decided to try to open up the sewer line clean out to see if he could unclog it from there.  When he opened the cleanout, apparently there was quite a bit of pressure in the line and sewage spewed out all over the bathroom floor, out into the corridor, and then down the elevator shafts.  This had the unfortunate affect of raising "quite a stink" in the building.

"Shitter's full!"

Now, we all make mistakes, and that's ok.  However our friend the plumber decided that since he had fixed the problem of the clogged line his work was done.  He decided to leave the mess for in the morning when his superintendent could deal with the problem as it was "outside his scope of work".  As a result, Friday morning came around and we were getting all kinds of phone calls in the office about the building smelling like crap.  For those of you not in commercial property management this is considered as a significant "negative" when it comes to tenant comfort.

I guess the boring part of the story is that because of the excellent staff I have here on site the problem was addressed rapidly, appropriate resources deployed, and the matter was cleaned up quickly.   I am sure that the morning was eventful for the plumber as well since we received a change notice later that day notifying us of the tenant's intent to engage a new plumbing company for the project moving forward.

-Jeff