So we woke up at around noon yesterday to hear the toilet gurgling and saw that the water level was down almost all the way and that there was backflow in the tub. Again. So we called the plumber, who came out, got angry at the last plumber for not actually fixing the problem before leaving, and then promptly left. Then the bathrooms actually flooded and we started bucketing water outside while constantly calling the emergency apartment helpline (our flatmate refused to get off the phone with them until our plumber arrived). When he got here, he started snaking every pipe he could, but nothing was working. He finally called some heavy duty plumbers because he didn't have good enough equipment to take care of it. We were dumping bucket after bucket after bucket for a good five hours before we could stop.

Now, two things here: firstly, the bucket we were using was our 2-3 gallon mop bucket, and we were using a long handled dustbin to scoop up the water from the toilet before it could overflow and hit the floor (we still had an inch or two on the floor), and like I said, this went on for five hours, so that was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 450 gallons that we bucketed outside. Secondly, this was late as hell by the time the plumbers got here and finally got to work on the blockage in the pipes, so someone above us actually called the fucking police because of the noise. I wanted to tell them to get their fucking waders on and come bucket this literal shit out of our place.

So, the plumbers finally cleared up the clog (we hope it's actually clear this time, because this is the fourth time our system has backed up, the second time it actually overflowed this badly), and it was...dryer sheets, baby wipes, cigarette butts, condoms...basically all the shit you're told NOT to put down the toilets. Every plumber who's come in so far has started the job by saying it was our fault and ended the job saying that it absolutely was not our fault because there's no way we could have made a clog that huge in the time we've been here, which I'll remind you has been only EIGHT MONTHS.

And they're damned right that it's not our fault. Not just that we couldn't have done that in that amount of time, but we don't do our laundry here, we don't have a baby, we smoke outside and have a receptacle for our butts, and we don't use condoms. If we have to, we will walk the landlady through the apartment nook by nook, cranny by cranny and ask her if she sees anything here that was found in the drains.

After everything was said and done, though, the first plumber who came out yesterday, who was actually just a maintenance guy here in our building, said he'd send a cleaner over to finish what he started, since he actually mopped up after the professionals finished.