'Then a chicken walks out of the back room': 15 Home installation workers share the craziest things they've peeked at in stranger's homes

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jun 21, 2024 3:00 PM EDT

Home is where the heart is, and it's also where all of your strangest belongings remain. No one knows this better than folks who have jobs that require them to randomly step foot inside people's homes, often with very little warning. Say, for example, a plumber. Maybe your shower isn't draining or your toilet just won't work. You have to call the plumber, and there's usually a set timeframe during which they'll show up to solve your issues. But for some reason, people won't clean up their home beforehand. Maybe they think that the plumber just needs to go into the bathroom, so he won't see the rest of the house as he walks through it. Who knows what's going through the minds of people as they leave sensitive items out for everyone to see? 

Major props to the electricians or internet installers of the world who have powered through, ignoring things like dogs or snakes (!!!) as they do their work. The lengths these folks go to to ensure their customers get their services is admirable. There were more than 4,900 replies to u/129jc's query, and we've picked some of the funniest ones for you to peruse below. 

Next up, this customer admitted to customer service reps that "I called… to be petty over 6 bucks." 

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10364228608
    via Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on Unsplash
  • 02
    Redditors that work inside people's homes, (i.e. Plumbers, electricians, ect) what is the funniest/weirdest thing you have seen going on in someone's home?
    via u/129jc
  • 03
    westside I'm an insurance adjuster. I had to present an estimate to both the homeowner and a life size mannequin that she had seated at the table that she told me to address as "Marie." While I was explaining the repair process, she started to paint Marie's nails.
    via u/westsidea**es
  • 04
    [deleted] Former satellite install tech here. I have many to add to this but the best was a family that had a Jaguar in the driveway, getting 3 HD DVR boxes, international dish with channels. They had NO FLOOR! I had to step over the piping and framing on the dirt floor to get from room to room. It was a rotten away wood floor. They were nice as
    via u/[deleted]
  • 05
    Itsagasket Former cable tech. Saturday morning, 8am, I knock on the door of house in a lower middle class neighborhood. Little dude answers the door. Its obvious I woke him. He points me to the TV and wanders back to bed. I kneel down and reach behind the TV to unplug the coax but I can't see what I'm doing so my eyes wander around the room. The place is clean and
    via u/Itsagasket
  • 06
    modest. There's a picture stand, about 6 feet tall, that holds about ten 8x11 portraits. Everyone of them. is of a hefty guy in flamboyant drag. Huh, look. at that. So I go outside and finish my work. I come back in and drag guy is standing in the kitchen in a pink robe done up as a woman who just woke up. He shaved. He put makeup on. He drew bags under his eyes. His wig
    via u/Itsagasket
  • 07
    is tussled to look like bed head. He speaks in a falsetto. He brings me a cup of coffee and I explain that squirrels chewed their cable line. I address him as "Ma'am" which delights him. Everything's cool. Then a chicken walks out of the back room. The chicken is wearing a red baseball jersey and red baseball cap.
    via u/Itsagasket
  • 08
    Then another chicken appears in a pink dress. And another one in a brown sweater. They walk over to drag guy and he casually pets one as he's talking to me. The princess chicken craps on his floor and he cleans it up with a paper towel. No big deal. Just a very friendly likeable guy who is very serious about dressing as a woman and his costumed poultry.
    via u/Itsagasket
  • 09
    Jeremystewartt I used to be a delivery boy at an appliance store so this is just one of my stories: Me and a coworker are delivering a washer and dryer to a really trashy trailer park and the guy is outside wearing only underwear and drinking a beer. We get the washer and dryer out of the truck and into his extremely
    via u/Jeremystewartt
  • 10
    tight doorways until we realize the laundry room doorway isnt big enough. Naked red neck grabs an axe and completely destroys the door way so the washer and drier would fit.
    via u/Jeremystewartt
  • 11
    Snowy1234 I own a PC repair co. Basically we collect, fix, drop, but sometimes we have to fix wireless issues or unplug/move computers which means spending time in the house. One time I was invited in by a couple and there was another guy on the sofa watching TV. What caught my attention was that he
    via u/Snowy1234
  • 12
    was sat in a warm house with a big thick hooded anorak on. Anyway I got on with what I was doing. I solved the problem and stood up and the guy on the sofa doesn't move his head from looking at the TV but mouths the words "help me". It took me
    via u/Snowy1234
  • 13
    a second to process that. I looked again, and he did it again. The couple were stood behind him and hadn't seen this. I looked at him and said "okay got it" as if I was talking about the IT issue. I got paid and was outta there fast. I went straight to the
    via u/Snowy1234
  • 14
    police station and gave them the story. They followed it up but I was never called to court so maybe it was a joke or something.
    via u/Snowy1234
  • 15
    MotherTucker89 Electrician here. I when I was an apprentice I worked in a old lady's house who rescued parrots. Most of them had no feathers at all due to stress. So it was like working in a room full of live pieces of chicken that could swear at you.
    via u/MotherTucker89
  • 16
    d... I do general tech support, as well as set up internet connections. I once went to a customer's house who wanted her USB dial-up modem set up. I explained to her that she needed a dial- up provider, and I needed that information to set up her modem. I got a bad vibe the entire time I was talking to her. I'm
    via u/dxm65535
  • 17
    pretty sure she was schizophrenic or bipolar. She definitely was agoraphobic, and paranoid about the things I was telling her. She thought I was trying to scam her, or "plant evidence" (which she'd said other people throughout her life had tried to do to her). Her speech pattern was erratic, and she went on and on about people trying to get her to do things or harm
    via u/dxm65535
  • 18
    her in her life. I started to think that maybe she was just with me, hard, but after a half-hour of listening to her stream-of- consciousness form of conversation, I knew she had to have something wrong with her. It reminded me of a family member with bipolar when they are in their manic phase.
    via u/dxm65535
  • 19
    I couldn't convince her that I was telling her the truth about her having to have a dial-up provider, with a username and password, not just a modem. She started blaming me for her not being able to connect to the internet, and I ended up having to excuse myself after she got angry and upset about it.
    via u/dxm65535
  • 20
    After I got back to the office, I told my coworkers about everything that had transpired, and put a note in her file that if anybody does tech support for her in the future, not to go to her house alone.
    via u/dxm65535
  • 21
    cruceno I had a side job working for a TV repair outfit. I was hired to drive the company truck, unhook the set, load it up, then return it once the repairs were complete. On this particular occasion, the business owner decided to tag along with me to get out of the office. We knock on the door and immediately notice that EVERYTHING is
    via u/cruceno
  • 22
    white. White carpet, white couch, white mop dog, white-ish art on the walls, white everywhere...it was almost clinical. The guy held us at the door and handed us booties to wear. He wouldn't allow us in the house without wearing them. He didn't want us to track any dirt into the house. Whatever dude, just let me get the TV so we can get going.
    via u/cruceno
  • 23
    We don the booties, walk in and start disconnecting and labelling cables and get ready to remove the TV from the wall. The guy walks into the living room from the kitchen with a huge bowl of tomato soup, trips over the dog and spills most of the bright red contents all over the carpet and couch. It was all I could do to keep from laughing while he fetched the carpet cleaning machine, cussing up a storm
    via u/cruceno
  • 24
    the whole time. After removing the TV, and loading it up, we walked back to the door to let the man know what to expect, repair timeframe, etc. He wouldn't allow us back in without new booties, since we had gone outside and 'ruined' our current pairs, and was clearly upset that we had interrupted his cleaning. Through the opening in the doorway, I
    via u/cruceno
  • 25
    could see the little white mop-dog was under the dining room table in full mode, squeezing one out onto the carpet.
    via u/cruceno
  • 26
    r….. I got asked to install broadband into a long drop toilet the other day.
    via u/raytaylor
  • 27
    L... Was installing a home security system The lady was nice as But she owned aloooot of pythons. Aloot of free range pythons. Alot of leg cuddling free range pythons.
    via u/Lord_of_pie
  • 28
    PhilMcraken1289 I don't work in other peoples houses but this one time an electrician came to fix some thing in my basement. My dad thought I was comming up the stairs so as a joke, he shut the door and held it closed. It turns out it was the electrician comming up the stairs. Confused, the
    via u/PhilMcraken1289
  • 29
    electrician says, "I need to come up" and my dad replies with, "Why?" It was another 5 or 10 seconds before my dad realised what he had done.
    via u/PhilMcraken1289
  • 30
    nastybacon Went to someones house to fix their PC. I got there, and they showed me the PC and what the problem was, then went and sat outside. Understandable if it was a nice day and sitting out weather. It wasn't. It was like they didnt want to be in their house when I was there. As once
    via u/nastybacon
  • 31
    I'd done the job, they came back in. I left and then I was sat in the car for 5 minutes answering an email, and they didn't come back outside again.
    via u/nastybacon
  • 32
    b... I once installed a copy machine in a bathroom under a shower head.
    via u/burnedBlue
  • 33
    The previous owner was handicapped and had a walk in bathroom off the kitchen. So this customer decided to turn that space into an office to run his credit card scam out of. So he had me hook the copier up under the shower head where no one was sitting.
    via u/burnedBlue
  • 34
    gotogoatmeal Not really "going on," but rather something I saw. I cleaned homes with my mother-in-law for a while last year and while I was cleaning in a home office, I saw a check on the desk for $40,000 that said "poker winnings" in the memo line. I would have thought it was a joke, but then I noticed that it was post-dated for like one month in the future,
    via u/gotogoatmeal
  • 35
    making it seem more credible. Like the person actually needed to get their funds in order to be able to pay out.
    via u/gotogoatmeal
  • 36
    nksoulskier Been waiting for this! Was a laborer on a construction crew in high school. One day my boss and I had to install a wall right down the center of a couples house. She had caught him cheating but he refused to move out so the compromise was to literally cut the house in half. The
    via u/nksoulskier
  • 37
    worst part was they were both there talking to us but refused to acknowledge each other's presence. Most awkward work day I may have ever had.
    via u/nksoulskier

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