The "Sniffer" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just opened the front door for the repairman from my heating/cooling company.  Seems I was smelling this funny odor throughout the house.  I had my wife convinced that natural gas was the culprit, but she said it smelled more like ….. well, she wasn't sure.  "You did close the bathroom door after you were in there," she said with a smile. For the last few months I have complained to her that when I sit in my lounge chair to read the morning paper I can smell gas.  Our gas fireplace is right next to the chair, so that may be a reason for that.  And, every time I turn on the gas fireplace, it lights instead of blowing the house to smithereens.  But, today is different.  A different type of odor and it seems to permeate throughout the house.  None of our alarms have been activated, but I'm still not satisfied.  "Just call Worley what's their name and have them come and check it out," she said.  So I did!  Took him maybe 15 minutes to arrive.  I opened the door for him and in pops two repairmen.  Must be important for them to send two guys for my odor.  They smelled the odor immediately, but had no clue what it could be.  They asked about the gas fireplace so I had them walk with me to the family room.  Carol was sitting on the sofa reading as we walked through the house and as we arrived in the family room I introduced the first repairman to her.  Then she saw the second guy, a young fellow who I assume was in training, and said, "And, who are you?  The sniffer?"  Put a smile on his face as he said, "Yeah, I'm the sniffer."  Well they checked out the gas burner in the basement which they had installed a few years ago and said everything was in working order.  Then they walked outside to check out the exhaust vents on the side of the house.  We have had quite a few snow storms in the past few weeks that has piled the snow high around the house.  I try to keep the exhaust pipes free of snow, but maybe I missed something.  They determined that the pipe may have a clog in it.  I asked how anything could get in the pipe and they assured me any type of rodent that may have found its way into the pipe.  They would have to call another guy who had a camera at the end of a wire that could see into the entire length of the pipe.  I could see my vacation money slowly slipping away.  But after an hour of testing everything, they pronounced the unit fit and told me something other than the burner was the problem.  Then I thought some more and remembered that I had just used my snowblower for an hour or so with the garage door opened.  Asked them if that may have been the reason.  They looked at each other and said, "Duh!"  No, they really didn't do that, because I beat them to it.  Seems I could have saved myself a whole bunch of work and a lot of money had I let my young snow plow driver plow the drive and left the snow blower in the garage untouched.  But then again, I wouldn't have given "the sniffer" a chance to use his expertise in my house.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.