1. The Pack
Three – no joke – pink-painted poodles constantly licking the toes of their owner, a big, hairy guy. It was like stepping into an LSD trip.
2. The Mountain
While I was fixing a clog, a young guy was building his wax mountain in the living room of his apartment. Right in the middle of the room stood a human-sized, colorful wax mountain. He held a candle dripping wax onto the “mountain.” When I asked if it was some kind of art installation, he said no, it was just his hobby because “it’s so beautiful, isn’t it?”
3. The Web
In an elderly couple’s bedroom, there was a bathtub – not unusual – but the toilet was there too, right across from the bed. The whole house was filled with artistic nudes of the (at least seventy-year-old) hosts, and they were very proud of them.
4. The Shrine
I was installing internet for a middle-aged couple who warned me to be extra careful in their “special room.” It was dedicated to Princess Lady Diana. The walls were covered with so many pictures you couldn’t see the paint, plus two life-sized cardboard cutouts of Diana and a candle-lit Diana shrine.
5. The Portraits
Huge portraits of men hung in a man’s living room. At first, I thought they might be relatives, but the faces seemed oddly familiar. The job was uneventful, but days later I kept thinking about those portraits. Then it hit me—one was Ted Bundy. A quick search confirmed my suspicion: the pictures were all of famous serial killers. Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz, and Charles Manson were all there.
6. Surreal
I had to install smoke detectors way out in the sticks. The path led over a broken bridge into the wilderness, and I wasn’t sure what kind of house I’d find. Turns out, there was no house—the family lived in two large trailers. I showed them the big holes in their rickety roofs and said the expensive smoke detectors were pointless there.
They insisted because their home had burned down before due to no smoke detectors. I installed the devices and during the safety briefing, I mentioned what NOT to do in a fire, including rescuing pets. They objected, saying their pet was extremely valuable. I thought they meant a pedigree dog, but then they brought out a huge eagle from the bathroom.
7. The Bachelor
I was installing electricity in a newly built apartment for a man in his thirties. The whole place was empty—no chairs, tables, couch, or TV—just a dirty mattress on the floor with some scattered clothes around it. I asked if he had just moved in. He said he’d lived there for two years. But in the entryway, there were about 30 pairs of brand-new, obviously expensive sneakers lined up. Not my place to judge how people live, but it was definitely strange.
8. The Sister
I was replacing a media box for an elderly lady who asked me to do the same in her sister’s room. When she opened the door, a huge black cloud of flies swarmed out, and I almost threw up from the smell. Her sister had been dead for at least a week.
9. The Hideout
The husband called me for a pipe burst. I was fixing under the sink when the wife arrived, visibly scared of me. She nervously paced and then urged her husband to rest in the living room while she took over.
During the repair, I knocked over a package taped under the sink. The woman quickly grabbed it and whispered that she’d long wanted to leave her husband who “won’t let her go”. The package held her new fake IDs and expensive jewelry to start a new life.
10. The Surprise
An elderly lady went away for a week and only noticed the power was out when she returned home. The problem was, she kept the remains of every cat she ever had—going back to the 1980s—in a deep freezer in the garage.
She didn’t want to bury them because she “kept their memory this way.” She cried over the remains. A week without power in summer… I won’t even describe the smell.
