TLDR: I’m home; contractor tasked with shower unit maintenance leaves shower running slightly, this results in the bathroom door needing replacement.

Twelve days ago, I returned home from my University Accommodation™, for reasons of my own sanity. Apart from leaving there by accident a couple of things that I wanted to take with me, and taking some things with me that I didn’t really need to, things went smoothly.

I like to be careful: I do video sweeps of things when I leave places to ensure that I have taken reasonable precautions against potential disaster, and to make sure I can prove I made such efforts. This time was no different. In my room, I ensured that the sink drain was fully open, and the faucet was fully not-open. For the shower, I again ensured that it was very not-on, that the drain was clear, and I fully closed the door: in the case that water was going through the shower system, it would be highly improbable for much to splash out, since the shower door ends about two metres above the shower floor.

One of my flatmates, a few nights ago, told me that he was being irritated by a dripping noise coming from my room.

Why would this be happening? A contractor had visited and replaced all the shower heads, as seems to be a regulatory requirement. I thought that it would have been a result of this, for him to just take a while to notice. (Perhaps it had not been making such a loud dripping noise at first?). I learned from him later that there had been another contractor (which, if I looked more closely at my emails, I would have noticed), who was tasked with cleaning the shower traps. This one, it seems, would have caused the issue.

I sent an email asking for them to have someone check it (put simply). This email was addressed to my Accommodation Officer, and CC’ed was the Accommodation Office, the flatmate, and my personal email address. (It turns out that my Accommodation Officer is currently taking some sort of planned leave, so I hope she’s having a good time.) The next day, the flatmate reported that a woman had entered my room and observed that there was a puddle in the bathroom. She turned off the shower properly, and left. I didn’t receive any sort of email update, however.

So, the following night, I sent another email. I addressed it exactly the same as previously, and told the updated story as I understood it: that someone had entered my room, turned off the shower, mopped it up, yada yada… I also provided my updated understanding of who would have been responsible (the second tasked contractor), and, with my working theory, asked about ‘How do things like this happen?’. Finally, I kinda roasted them:

It would have been nice to have received some sort of recognition that my email had been received (apart from $accommodation_officer's autoreply), and that it would be (or had been) actioned upon. Could I receive some direct form of confirmation that this situation appears to have been the case -- or a clarification if I'm mistaken? Having received no direct communications about this is super not acceptable, and is worrying, to say the least.

Today (late morning) I received a response from someone I’ve had email conversations with before. The addressees for this reply wee myself, and CC’ed, the Accommodation Officer, and presumably a peer (or management person) of the Accommodation Officer. What happened to my flatmate whose concern it initially was, nevermind my personal email address? My personal email address not being included is fine — I use it for sending because it complements the auto-forwarding nature of my account configuration. She apologised for the late reply me that she had checked my room to find that ‘[the shower] hadn’t been switched off fully resulting in the bathroom having a pool of water covering the floor.’ She said also that she mopped up all the water, and would be ‘sending cleaners up [today] to mop up any last bits’. —If she mopped up all the water, how could there be any remaining bits?— Whatever, slight discrepancies in communication. Fine.

She told me that the building surveyor had visited to ‘have a look [inside the room] to make sure there was no damage’, and that the door was swollen — and that they’ve raised a job to have this sorted for me. —The building surveyor very clearly failed, their looking did not have any repairing effects.— Again, another discrepancy but, fine. She confirmed that the shower is now ‘switched off’, and said that she hopes that my flatmates won’t have any further issues with noise.

I thought that this would be the end of this for now. I was wrong!

Just over an hour later, I received an email from another familiar name, stating that a contractor will be ‘re-visiting some flats and bedrooms in $accommodation_block […] ‘in order to fix any bathroom maintenance issues he has noted while cleaning out the shower traps.’ I am highly tempted to send a reply CC’ing those involved in the case of the shower door being replaced, asking about whether this involves a lie of omission, and is a way of skirting around the issue caused by the contractor of the ‘pool of water’, and of the door needing to be replaced due to swelling.

Should I?

Oh yeah, tags. #Edinburgh #Napier #University #Accommodation