About a month (maybe more) or so ago, we found out that the cold water knob to our bathtub wasn't working. (Where we live we have one large whirlpool tub and two shower stalls.) So, we called the apartment manager, S, and told him.

S sent over two of his maintenance guys. It was supposed to be a half hour job. 5 hours later, these guys had taken a simple job and turned it into a nightmare. They didn't know that something needed to be screwed off, they just thought it was stuck, so they decided to try and hammer it off. After that, it wasn't just the cold water knob that needed to be replaced - it was both knobs, the faucet, and some of the plumbing. These guys left and about an hour later, a real plumber came over to look at it.

This plumber was here for about three hours and had to cut through the tiles of our tub in order to cap things off so we could have water. We were without any water in the apartment from 1:30pm until 10:30pm.

Yesterday, another real plumber came by and fixed things. It took a few hours, but now we have a working tub... with a great big hole in the side. He put something down there since he needed to re-do the pipes anyway that makes it so if this happens again you can just shut off the water to the tub and not to the whole apartment.

Because of this, he recommended that a panel be put in instead of re-tiling it. That will be up to the manager. Who, by the way, was supposed to stop by yesterday afternoon after the plumber left and look things over to see how to put back together the gaping hole in the tiles. He never showed up. Ah well, at least the tub is working again.