You’d have to go to work occasionally so you could, like, feed me and stuff.
Oh no believe me, tub-through-the-ceiling was the first thought I had when that first drop of water hit me.
I am going to make a huge stink about this. The landlord is a pretty reasonable woman (it’s actually a very small- like 6 employee- property management company) so I know she knows it’s in her best interests to correct this problem. If it happens again, I’m stating in no uncertain terms that I will not live underneath such obviously inconsiderate people. There is at least one other vacancy in the building, I’d happily move down the hall to avoid being crushed to death by a 500 pound bathtub.
But I’m also going to stand up to my neighbor. I know some will advise against this, but I think a curt “You realize it rains in my bathroom when you shower and let pools of water collect on the floor, don’t you?” would at least make me feel better.
My old manager, who I was friendly with, once showed me an apartment recently vacated in the building. When he opened the door, I could see that all the wooden floorboards were so badly warped that they were curved up and down throughout the living room. It was hot and steamy inside, like a jungle. What had happened was that a hot water pipe had burst underneath the floor, and the tenant hadn’t said anything. For months. The manager discovered the disaster only when the guy moved out.
You say that the managment is a 6 employee- property management company. What about the OWNER of the property?
If I owned an apartment building, and the property management company was letting a tenant flood their apartment regularly, I’d be pissed. If the property management company was doing “repairs” by merely painting over structural flood damage, I’d be really pissed. And If the reusltant water damage turned out to cost many 10’s of thousands of dollars (which it probably will), I would be beyond pissed at the management company.
But…how would we tell?
Your upstairs neighbor isn’t by any chance European, is she? I’ve found that curtain-less showers are almost the norm there.
You have? What part of Europe would that be (it’s a pretty big place!)?
It just seems a bit odd to me (and not doubting the OP) that the land lady will have maintenance people there all the time but not tackle the real problem.
I lived in an apartment with funky plumbing. Sometimes it was the tub that wouldn’t drain, so I’d call the property manager and the maintenance guys would come and pretend to work. Sometimes it was the bathroom sink, but most of the time it was the kitchen sink. Meaning I couldn’t do dishes, meaning I couldn’t really cook. We ate lots of Lean cuisine and Banquet pot pies.
But the shittiest thing that ever happened was when the Water Department was working on something under the street. They had tore up the street and were pulling pipes out, and doing Og know what. I was in my bed, happily reading a book, leaning against the wall between bedroom and bathroom. I hear gurgling, then water flowing, then I hear what sounds like Old Fucking Faithful. I waited til it stopped then cautiously opened the bathroom door. My bathroom was covered, floor to ceiling, wall to wall with piss and shit. I squealed, shut the door, and called the property manager. But it was not office hours. Putting on my yucky shoes and nasty sweats, I go to try and solve the mystery. It had obviously come out of the tub. That’s where most of it was pooled up, and less sprinkles further from the tub, such as the ceiling over the toilet. When the maintenance guys come almost 18 hours later, they plunge the toilet and tell me not to flush tampons. Um, I don’t. They then walked out wearing thier shit covered shoes through my living room, leaving me to deal with the mess. I had a friend come over with a case of paper towels and ten gallons of vinegar, but that was just for the details at the end. The floor was flooded, I had to use comforters and towels to get most of it. I puked while I was cleaning it, and didn’t even bother aiming for the toilet. What’s the point when you’re standing in Shit Creek? I guess the only good part of it all is that I wasn’t in there when it happened.
So, yeah, you might want to move. It doesn’t sound like the issues you have are taken seriously.
I had this problem once but in reverse. My downstairs neighbor, who was also the super, kept getting flooded every time I took a shower. He told me to get a shower curtain. I already had one. He came in one day while I was gone and replaced the one I had with a cheaper one. He still got flooded.
He accused me of deliberately dumping gallons of water on the floor. “It must be an inch deep up there”, he said. I tried to explain that that was not possible, what with the laws of physics and such. He wouldn’t listen. Logic was not his strong suit. He said that he had a plumber up there a number of times, and I could see that work was done. The plumber’s verdict? I was deliberately dumping gallons of water on the floor. I protested time and again that it had to be a leak in the pipes. His response? “Stop dumping gallons of water on the floor!”
One morning I was just finishing up a shower, when I heard him storming up the stairs. He banged on the door and I let him in, wearing nothing but a towel. He started yelling at me, but I pre-empted his rage by grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to the bathroom. “Look”, I said, pointing to the almost bone-dry floor. “On drop, two drops. Not exactly a flood, is it?”
“Huh”, he said. “Maybe there’s a leak in the pipes.”
Gee, ya think?
The South-West Midlands. 
France & Greece mostly. Maybe it’s just a French thing. About 2/3 of the places we stayed when we were in France a few years ago just had a shower in the corner of the bathroom with a drain below, no shower curtain at all. Greece was like that as well, but that was 20 years ago, things may have changed since then.
We had a similar problem with our condo a couple of years ago. The resident owners upstairs allowed their bathroom to get into such bad shape–apparently including a cracked tub–that maintenance decided to do a full remodel and raised the condo fee for that unit to recoup the loss. Maintenance left us with about a 1’×6" hole in our ceiling.
That slowed down the leak but didn’t stop it; maintenance didn’t believe this. Took a chunk of drywall nearly hitting me in the head to finally convince them to look further. They said that the space between the tub and floor upstairs wasn’t sealed properly*. They also fixed our ceiling, now with a 2’×6" hole, and patched the wall where I poked a hole with my finger. We still have about half that wall bowed in at the base; maintenance should have replaced that and did something about the peeling paint on the opposite side.
*I didn’t buy that and suspect the secondary problem was with the roof, due to the fact that we only saw water coming through the hole after a heavy rain. One particularly heavy rain left us with water dripping from the hole for at least 24 hours. Maintenance said they went up to the roof and made a puddle on it but couldn’t find anything. I think they did find something but didn’t want to admit it because they weren’t able to do anything about it at the time and that they had already put the upstairs neighbors on the hook for that remodel job. Guess which building just got its roof replaced?
Next time you’re in Spain let me introduce you to my mother’s Owners Coop. The ones who refuse to fix the terrace she doesn’t own but has the right to use, and who turned that and the other two terraces unusable by putting some “insulating stuff” (painted-over fiberglass, the fibers could be seen through the paint within weeks) over the tiles instead of retiling, the last time there were leaks, and who refuse to even consider anything with the word “terrace” in it until the 8th-floor neighbors have leaks on their ceilings. The ones who were claiming that the wall separating it from the next terrace was in no danger of falling down, just 6 hours before it did, indeed, fall down (I’ve got pics somewhere…). The ones who claim the central heating is controlled by a thermostat but who must have placed the stat inside somebody’s exit sphincter, as the heating does things like switch on when it’s 30C outside and not switch on when it’s 10C.
Oh yes I do believe the OP…
PS: in Spain the standard used to be curtains, now most people are using glass dividers. I hate it when they put a partial glass divider and then, depending on how you point the showerhead, the floor ends up being a pool.
Well I’ve had my fair share of idiot landlords and such, so whether this one is decent or not remains to be seen.
But it seems odd to me that the maintenance guy would lie about repeatedly checking for leaks and, finding none, not knowing what else to do. I could certainly see how previous attempts at finding this mystery water source would fail, if they didn’t get there as the water was leaking they would not see the huge puddle upstairs.
The apartment upstairs from me has that same situation (I know, because I used to live in it). My roommates and I actually built an improved shower-curtain-holder-thing to be sure that water wouldn’t leak out, which involved cutting the shower curtain to custom fit around the plumbing fixtures. Our landlord loved us.
That actually happened once in my college apartment complex. Some dude came home drunk from a party and started the bath running and passed out. The whole thing flooded and came crashing down into the unit below causing over $100k in damage.
Thank YOU for the best laugh I’ve had in ages. At your expense. I’m sorry.
^You owe me one now. 
So, RedRoses, is that evil Suburban Sprawl starting to look at little more appealing? 