Muddy tunnel work is my least favorite thing about what i do

Im one of those dumbasses who enjoys being a plumber. I like being the fix it guy. I take pride in being one of the ones who comes to fix it when you cant, or wont. Lot of times it puts me in places like this. The left side of the photo is my ingress/egress. Im about 10-12’ inside at this point. Tunnel continues straight behind me about 6’, then hangs a Louie, and dead ends about 12’ past the direction change. This is how you move water/drain and gas lines when some rich asshole wants to move the sink and cooktop from a wall to the middle of the kitchen because island sinks/cooktops are in fashion here.

Tunnel work makes me leery, and ive been doing this for a couple decades now. Its one of the few things where safety guidelines and best practices are wadded up and thrown out the door. You arent getting a trench box under a slab, stepping/sloping a tunnel would take such wide steps that you would compromise the slab due to undermining so much dirt. This is a relatively short one, not that length of tunnel really matters as i still probably wouldnt make it out if something went tits up. Ive done maybe 1200 tunnel jobs, and after every single job im grateful i come out again. And i dont even have the hard job. The real hard job is the poor bastards who come dig the tunnels i need dug so rich assholes can have island sinks. The company i call for my tunneling has had two guys die in tunnel collapse two years ago.

I should learn to code instead. Code cant collapse and kill you in an instant.