'[Next time] call a professional': Bellboy floods a hotel room and causes $ 1000's in water damage after a bad manager tries to force him to fix the hotel's plumbing

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Jan 22, 2025 10:00 AM EST

This lobby boy tries to stay in his lane, but a totalitarian manager demands otherwise…

These days, whenever a job application says the applicant 'must be prepared to wear many hats,' it means that this particular job offer is unclear and management is going to have no problem piling on extra work for their employees. Usually, it's a red flag in the workplace whenever managers see fit to throw inexperienced workers into challenging and specific situations because it rarely goes well–like the plumbing mishap in this next story. 

There's one particularly infamous field of expertise that is known to humble even the handiest of handymen: Plumbing. There's a reason plumbers charge $450/hour for their services–they know what they're doing and they're not going to flood the entire building with a single mistake. This is why the bellboy in our next tale insisted management hire a pro for a squeaky leak in one of their upstairs room, but alas, management's impatience cost them far more than a few drops of water on the upper floors.

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  • Cheezburger Image 10457704704
    via AndreyPopov

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • When I bought my apartment, it was a total dump. All I could afford was a fixer-upper, and boy did I learn my fair share of fixing! Plumbing, however, was one DIY project I refused to tackle, fearing a fiery water explosion or a panicked watershed forming in my kitchen. Although my husband was brave enough to tackle all that and the kitchen sink (literally), I certainly wouldn't touch a water pipe unless my life depended on it. 

  • Many of us have our aversions in the home improvement sector, but in the workplace, and especially in luxury hospitality, the stakes are far higher and far more expensive when we're talking about flood damage. Keep scrolling to read this story of vindicated justice when an employee maliciously complies with his bad boss's demands, causing thousands of dollars in damages over a leaky pipe.

  • "FIX IT NOW!!! - You got it Boss!"

    I was working in a hotel in the UK as a lobby boy. My afternoon job was to handle guests' requests for extra pillows, blankets, etc. The system worked like this: the guests informed the reception, the details were written in a
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  • notebook (e.g., "Room XY - pillow"), and every so often, I checked the book, solved the problems, and ticked them off when done. One night, during dinner, the hotel boss wrote a note in the
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  • book: "Room - hot water tap is not working." I went to the room, checked it-yup, not working. I went back and wrote in the book: "Can't fix it, call a plumber." On my next round, there was a new message: "FIX IT NOW," underlined three times...
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  • Well... I went back to the room, checked the hot water tap again (in the UK, there are two taps on the sink, one for cold and one for hot). Still couldn't fix it. I tried a few things until, somehow, the pipe (the one from the wall to the sink) popped out, and boiling hot water started pouring onto the floor at full force.
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  • PANIC MODE ON. I grabbed the room phone and called reception-busy. So, I sprinted through the hotel (the room was on the farthest side), jumped into reception, and shouted:
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  • "Room XY, PLUMBER, NOW!" Then I rushed back to the room. The water was still gushing out at full force, so I just sat on the edge of the bathtub, holding the pipe so that the water poured into the tub instead of flooding the floor.
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    via pexelshot
  • After about three minutes of this, the hotel boss peeked into the bathroom, went pale, and ran away... Five more minutes passed. Then the fire alarms went off- because of the steam.
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  • Fortunately, the staff already knew what was happening, so they told the guests it was a false alarm and didn't evacuate the hotel. Another ten minutes later, they finally shut off the water supply for the entire wing of the hotel.
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  • A plumber arrived and fixed the tap in three minutes. Now came the fun part: cleaning. Surprisingly, there wasn't much water in the bathroom (considering the tap had been
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  • gushing for over fifteen minutes). So, I went one floor lower to see where all that water had gone. I entered the room's bathroom, switched on the light... but it was very dim.
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  • That's when I realized: the bowl- shaped lamp cover on the bathroom ceiling was filled to the brim with water, with the lightbulb happily sitting inside it. Oh sh. Light off.
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  • Drained the water from the lamp cover, mopped up that bathroom too... but still, it didn't seem like enough water for what had happened. So, I went even lower.
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  • Below that bathroom, on the ground floor, there was a corridor (luckily, not another room). But the ceiling had gotten so wet that it collapsed-a 2x3 meter section of it had come crashing down onto the carpet.
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  • After 15 minutes in a sauna-like bathroom, 30 minutes of cleaning, and clearing the rubble, I finally stepped outside for some fresh air. That's when my roommate walked past, took one look at me, and asked:
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  • "Did someone puke on you?" Since then, whenever I say I can't fix something, they actually believe me and call a professional.
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  • appleblossom1962 There's a judge on TV who says the cheap comes out expensive. It would've been cheaper just to hire the plumber in the first place now they have to worry about the wiring and the ceilings and the floors and all of that they have to worry about mold. This is going to be an expensive fix if they do it right
    via appleblossom1962
  • Lelketlen Hentes As far as i know a 30£ cost (to call the plumber) went up to almost 100€+ by calling the plumber an emergency job. That's only the direct cost, as you said, the rest can be in the thousands.
    via Lelketlen_Hentes
  • Norowas Did management attempt to pass down the bill to you for the damages? What was the aftermath?
    via Norowas
  • Lelketlen Hentes The big boss himself wrote the 'FIX IT NOW', and after that he couldn't blame me :D the other office person saw everything, so there was a witness too. I was in a clear. Except a few funny words from other collegues who knew what happened.
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  • jamesholden As a hotel maintenance person who deals with water damage like you describe on the regular: By knowing you shouldn't have messed with it means you're already qualified for a maintenance job, you should apply.
    via jamesholden
  • Sagaincolours My landlord does this all the time. Fixes things, but in the cheapest way possible and often badly because he doesn't know what he is doing. And then he has to come back and fix that, and sometimes replace items that broke because of his bad work.
    via Sagaincolours
  • I am honestly kind of surprised that he never seems to learn from it. He must have infinite money and time...
    via Sagaincolours

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boss worker employee hotel hospitality manager job fafo labor work coworkers bad manager working bellboy employees supervisor workplace company coworker business service industry flood
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