Jeff Schmittinger, owner and founder of Wisconsin Chimney Technicians in Waukesha, Wisconsin, has been cleaning the White House chimneys for 19 years and three consecutive administrations and still hasn't been paid for it.
Frankly, he never charged a dime for it. Schmittinger first volunteered for the job in 1993 after hearing President Bill Clinton's speech to Congress about the dire state of the federal deficit. Wanting to do his part, he called the White House and offered to clean the 35 chimneys at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for free. “I didn't think they would accept my offer,” he admits. “I was shocked.” The job got easier over the years; when he first showed up, the chimneys were caked with the soot of countless presidencies. He used two vacuum cleaners on that first clean, he says, “because we didn't want to leave the White House and not let it be a White House anymore.”
