Having lost their job in carpentry, Mario and Luigi, two loafers better known as the Mario Bros., took up plumbing assuming it was easy work. You know, turn a knob here, twist a pipe there, charge $80 everywhere. But more often than not, you'd find the two sleeping on the job. It was inspection day and the supervisor needed to get the Mario Bros out of sight, so he sent them on a fool's errand requiring they go beneath New York City and examine every pipe for a clog in the system.

By late morning, the Mario Bros. had checked several pipes to see if there was anything stopping the flow of drainage. Eventually, they hit paydirt.

It was in there pretty good, whatever it was.

Out poured a cluster of dead turtles. Perhaps they got lost at sea, or no one was buying the turtles at the pet store. The Mario Bros. didn't spend any time thinking it over. Their minds were solely on the job as they disposed of the turtles in arguably the most humane way possible...

A job well done! Who says you need brains to be a plumber?

Nothing in life is ever easy. Shortly after the turtles, a phase of crabs came pouring out of the pipe. Well, anything worth doing is worth doing right, so the Bros. got down and dirty by tossing the crabs like used hankies. While cleaning up, there was some ambient clanking that sounded like it was getting louder. They had a look over the shoulder only to find that a pipe on the other side had just given birth to another slimy sea creature.

Being free at the moment, Luigi took on the task on the other side.

Only to find that this one was still kickin' and had all his original teeth.

It was about noon, now. Pack it up, hit a nap.

Our friend Murphy and his awesome Law saw to it that another phase of withered corpses would find their way around. What in the world was going on? It seemed like every few moments, turtles, crabs and flies would pour in in droves. The work seemed endless, what could be the explaination?

Located directly above was a five star gourmet restaurant. They had a reputation to keep, you know, and had to appeal to every snoot and food critic in town. The problem with this need to be the crème de la crème is that it caused the chefs to be extremely wasteful. The restaurant was known for their signature turtle soup, king crab, and (their answer to caviar and other such exotic hors d'oeuvres) pan-fried fly pupae. And everytime anyone order anything, they needed to cart it in fresh, right away. It was their guarantee to use the freshest ingredients, even if that meant overfishing and drastically increasing the emission of daily smog. Whatever wasn't used was tossed in the garabage disposal.

As if it wasn't bad enough that this created an endless amount of work, there was little regard as to how they were disposed. This often led to clogs which just took up more time. Our jerk friend Murphy returned to get his laugh on, and bestowed treats of misfortune:

Attacks from the undead.

Busted gas pipes.

Sudden bursts from refrigeration units.

 

Is all this really necessary?

 

After what felt like an endless amount of phases and many, many hours later, every pipe was cleared out, checked and rechecked, and all vermin properly disposed. The feeling of accomplishment after a hard day's work is a grand one indeed. Now to get home, have a good soak, and rest those old bones.

If only it were that easy.

Ok, I'm going to break here and let you in on an important lesson about work, be it chore, task, favor or paid profession. It always needs to be done, and there's always more to be done. It doesn't matter what profession you take on, no matter what kind of work you do, no matter how long you spend doing it, and especially regardless of how well you did it, there is no greater certainty than the fact that...

*plop*

*Plop*

*PLOP*

Needless to say, Mario snapped and went on to do a little special plumbing on the root of the problem. He and Luigi were shortly fired thereafter.