Sometimes it’s an emergency, and the crews have to turn the water off unannounced.
That makes for some horrid situations, to be sure. One lady (similar to singular1) had just begun to wash her hair after perming it. The water department directed her to rush to a gas station and use their bathroom sink.
Another lady requested that she not be charged for water during the time the water was off.
This happened to me, at a salon. The stylist had just finished putting the perm solution on and set the timer. She was rinsing the sink when the water shut off. The water crew said it wouldn’t be back on for a couple of hours. We ended up driving to her mother-in-law’s house in the next town and using her kitchen sink.
I lived in an apartment that frequently shut off water for repairs. I started keeping a pitcher of water in the refrigerator.
If you live in a house with a basement, in a pinch you could go to the basement and open the faucet for the washbasin: a few gallons of clean water should drain from the rest of the pipes in the house.
Shit! I gotta ask my dad what would happen!!!
You have a cat-couldn’t you just use your cat’s water dish? 
Ha! That’s exactly what I thought when emmaliminal mentioned the cat 
I’m trying to remember just how thoroughly I sanitized that dish after the cats drowned a mouse in it.
Those cats could give Dick Cheney lessons on torture techniques, I tell ya…
We had a water main break earlier this morning. Brown water…ugh.