Plumbing PR

Plumbers must have a new PR team in place. I must say that I don't really think about plumbers that much unless I've got a plugged drain or a toilet backing up (and then I think about them quite strenuously). But it turns out that Thanksgiving is the busiest time of the year for plumbers, and they want you to know it. The fact was featured in a radio story on Marketplace on Friday night (and through the magic of the Internets, you can either listen to it or read the transcript). Their work on the Friday after Thanksgiving may be even worse because many plumbers, like people in other occupations throughout the United States, want to take the day off, but even if all plumbers were at their battle stations all day Thursday and Friday, there are more service calls then than at other times of the year.

I would have assumed that this story was just some holiday filler Marketplace was featuring until I saw the prominent placement of a similar article in Saturday's Washington Post. Right there on the first page of the second section is a piece extolling the very same virtues of plumbers. A sidebar offers tips from Roto-Rooter on how to keep your pipes running smoothly, and the main story supplies some business details:

Service calls the day after Thanksgiving run about 50 percent over the volume of any other Friday, according to research by Roto-Rooter, a plumbing industry leader.

. . .
Roto-Rooter, which employs [Northern Virginia plumber Patrick] Leake, expected to earn half a million dollars in added revenue yesterday; receipts should run about 25 percent above normal for the Thanksgiving weekend as a whole. Much of that comes from fixing sink clogs, a job that might run anywhere from $85 to $250, with a premium customary for work on Sundays and holidays.

All in all, it's "a pretty good bump," said Paul Abrams, spokesman for the Cincinnati-based company. And Christmas, he noted, falls on a Monday this year. "We're looking at another long weekend."

Happy holidays, guys!