There's nothing more unsettling than the anticipation of finding the culprit that's clogging your toilet. But an anecdote shared on Reddit is downright hysterical and something you can only witness in a movie comedy.
A Reddit post asked: "What really happened in real life that if you saw it in a movie you would say 'that's totally unrealistic?'"
One user responded with an epic answer to end all answers.
The user explained that his grandfather owned a roadside motel in his youth, but because the facility was so old, it was subject to frequent repair and maintenance by plumbers.
At one point they had a clogged toilet after a guest checked out, so they called the plumber to come and clean it out. The plumber came in with his bag of gear and set to work, but the clog was stubborn. After a few tries, he decided he needed to get the snake.
I don't know if you've ever seen a serious plumbing snake, but the big ones are a sight to behold. This isn't a little crank auger, it's a full-on electrical powered snake with a big motor on the back and a little grabby claw on the end.
So he fires up the snake and sends the metal coil down into the pipes with the claw closed, figuring whatever's down there he'll just bump it a bit, push it down the pipes until it clears - but this doesn't happen either. Finally, in frustration, he twists the control to open the mechanical claw at the end of the coil, closes it on something, throws the motor in reverse and starts to pull it back up.
By now a couple of members of the staff have gathered in the room to try and figure out what the hell got flushed down the toilet that this giant machine couldn't remove. The motor is really straining - you know that sound an electric motor makes when it's working really hard? The whole machine is struggling to pull whatever this is back up through the pipes and into the room.
Finally, after an extended wait, the object is slowly dragged, sopping wet, out of the toilet bowl - and it's a shower curtain.
The staff is dumbfounded. They're trying to figure out how this could have happened. It would be weird enough if the guest had ripped the shower curtain down and flushed it down the toilet, but the shower curtain in the room is still there. It would be even weirder if the guest had brought their own shower curtain to the motel and tried to flush it down the toilet, but it's clearly one of their shower curtains. Did they try and steal the shower curtain, leave with it, then feel guilty and come back only to find that the shower curtain had already been replaced, and then flush the shower curtain down the toilet to hide the evidence?
While they're discussing this, the room phone rings. The person on the other end is screaming, hysterical, so it takes a few minutes for them to figure out that it's the housekeeper who was cleaning the rooms. After a few moments, they manage to get the story out of her:
The snake had missed the clog entirely. Rather than spiraling down into the plumbing where it was intended to go, it had wound its way into the central line, and then back up the pipes in the room next door. It spiraled its way up, out the toilet bowl, and then started flailing wildly around the next-door bathroom like a Lovecraftian nightmare made of steel, knocking things off of shelves and clattering furiously around the room. Then, while the hapless housekeeper watched in horror, a metal claw opened on the end of it and snagged the shower curtain, ripped it off the bar ring-by-ring, spun it around the room until it was coiled tightly around the cable, and dragged it back down into the toilet bowl.
The post ends with the source of the clog remaining a mystery.
The story left quite an impression on readers.
Yes, please!
Good thing no one was taking a shower at the time. Norman Bates has got nothing on that mechanical claw.
@kileywrestling/Bluesky
