3 minute read
Joey Snider’s Story Is No Pipe Dream
Joey Snider’s Story Is No Pipe Dream
By Leonard Shapiro
For over four decades, master plumber and water treatment specialist Joey Snider was the president and CEO of J.R. Snider Ltd. in the Middleburg, Virginia area. A highly skilled professional technician and savvy businessman, the wide range of services he and his company provided were widely regarded by countless clients over the years and made his brand a household name.
When Joey retired and sold his business in April, 2023, he turned his attention and his passion to another pursuit, writing about his wide-ranging experiences out in the field and behind a desk and offering sage advice to “those coming up behind you.”
The result: Joey’s extremely entertaining first book, “If Water Runs Through It, We Do It: Memoirs of a Plumber.” He described it as “a compendium of short stories, lessons learned and the adventure of a service plumber from apprentice to seven-figure business owner.”
“Share the knowledge you gained from those who went before you. That is why I’m writing this book,” Joey noted in the preface. “I hope that I can attract the audience of those at a crossroads in their life and also those who may have influence over young people who are deciding how to make a living doing something they enjoy.
“I hope my short stories, my opinions and my advice are interesting and inspirational to both young men and women curious about the trades. If this book helps one person find a hidden passion, then I will be very happy and proud and consider my time well spent.”
There’s plenty of sage of advice and many lessons learned, not to mention lots of fun reading along the way. Consider for example, Joey’s top ten list of items that somehow managed to get flushed down a bottled up toilet over the course of his fascinating career.
They included: a mouse trap, with mouse attached; reading glasses; toilet paper holder with spring attached; perfume bottles; marijuana pipes; GI Joe figurines; popsicle sticks; hygiene products; makeup mirrors and, “last but not least…a wallet in a public men’s room. (Yes, it was a little dingy, but returned to its rightful out-of-state owner.)”
Then there was a customer who needed the drain to a stopped up sewer line cleaned. When the job was successfully completed, the homeowner came outside to see what had caused the problem.
“No worries,” Joey’s assistant told him. “Just some condoms that got caught in an elbow just before the septic tank.”
“That’s impossible,” said the man of the house. “I don’t use condoms!!!”
Needless to say, Joey wrote, “we collected our payment quickly and headed to our next call.”
And just what does it take to truly be a professional plumbing service provider? Joey asked in the book.
“It all comes down to intestinal fortitude,” he answered his own question. “Fortitude means courage. But used after the word intestinal, you now have a human characteristic or trait that comes from the gut. Now we mix courage with determination and that, my friends, is one of the most important pieces of being a professional service plumber, and just a good human being, for that matter.”
Also for that matter, it perfectly describes Joey Snider, plumber, now author and clearly just a good human being.
