Working from Home is Flooded with Perks and Hindered with Floods

This past week I came across a facebook post describing the pros and cons of working from home:

Read ME

I can relate to this in so many ways.  On the plus side:

I can avoid the elements if need be.  The weatherman says it is freezing?  Snowing?  Raining?  Prepare for what? I just won't leave the house today.

I sleep in every day.  Although I set my alarm for 8:30am to make sure I get up "early" and to try to feel "normal" and relate-able to all the people with real jobs,  I must admit that I often, I mean always,  proceed to press snooze for about two hours... maybe longer...

When a friend of mine is in town for a meeting and asks do I want to meet up for brunch?  Hey, no problem let's do it!  No guilt.  No fake sicknesses.  No paycheck either, but hey,  I can work later.

The most important perk though, is there are no cubicles.  I can work in bed, on the couch, at the desk, in the library, in a coffee shop, on a bus, on a train, in a plane...

The down sides to working from home though are also very spot on...

My vocabulary and communication skills have significantly faltered.  I cannot remember the next word when I am right in the middle of a sentence.  I stutter.  I stop and pause, and then I say a word that starts the same way but means something totally different.  "That's just proboscis! ... I mean preposterous!!!!"   I feel like I used to be smart... but I am losing it.  Did I ever even have it?

This Proboscis monkey is preposterous!

I watch way too many youtube videos (which can also be moved up into the positive section).

I spend way too much time on facebook.  Although how I see it, facebook is now my co-worker and oftentimes my only social interaction for the day....or week... soooooo it's ok.  Right?   Facebook is after all, the inspiration for this post...

I shower way too little and wear my pajamas way too long (this, in my mind, can also be moved into the positive section, although Trevor would likely beg to differ).

Yes, I can meet up with that rare friend who on occasion comes to visit, but on a daily basis I see no one.  And the lack of talking to people has gotten to me a bit, but it also makes me much more excited to talk to anyone!  The mailman, "hey, what's up? How're you doing!?"  The grocery delivery guy, "what's the weather like out there?  Snowing you say?" (he probably wants to murder me, but I tip him extra when it is cold).  And today, the plumber.. "So why is this brown water coming from the ceiling?"

When it starts raining inside, there is no place to hide to avoid the elements.

After returning home from brunch with a college friend around 1pm today, I open my apartment door to find my husband also working from home today...

I take off my coat and head for the bathroom.  To my surprise the sink is covered in a light brown liquid....  My immediate instinct is to blame Trevor....  But why would he pee all over the sink?  

[I would like to interrupt this story to let it be known that, to my knowledge, Trevor has never been a sink-pee-er.  He has only ever been a toilet peer-er, or a camping tree-pee-er, but I thought maybe he would pee in the sink if he were desperate, or having a bad dream.  After all, we were just joking around only the night before about peeing in the sink or the tub when one of us was taking too long in the bathroom.  But that was just a joke. He wouldn't really do that...or would he!?]  

Then I notice the mirror has dried up trails of liquid that had been running down it.  He would not pee all the way up there... not up near the ceiling... not in individual streams like that.   I look back to the liquid on the sink, which is also covering our toothbrushes, and it is definitely brown, and definitely has dirt or some sort of particles in it.  This is not Trevor's pee.

[I know what you are thinking...  I should have been a detective...  No? That is not what you were thinking?? Oh, you thought I should think more highly of my husband?  You think I should not automatically assume that he must have peed all over the place the second something was wet in the bathroom?  Well, I can tell you, you are right.  I feel pretty bad that this was my first conclusion.]

"Trevor, have you used the bathroom yet?"

"Yea, why?"

"Well, what is this gross brown liquid all over the place?!"

"Huh?!"

A startled Trevor stumbles to the bathroom to investigate. We decide it is coming from the ceiling (obviously), but we are not sure why.  We clean it up and sit down in the living room to get to work.  Maybe if we forget about the liquid, it will not show up again.

Then we hear a sprinkling of water in the bathroom.  It starts trickling harder like someone has turned on the shower.  I run in to find water pouring down from the ceiling.  What the heck!?

We call the landlord.  It goes straight to voicemail.

Trevor runs up the stairs to see what is going on above us.  I put a garbage can under the leak and take this video.

Trevor returns with the following information:

1. The trickling of water can be heard through the wall and it is much louder on the second floor, but no one is home.  
2. The trickling of water is insanely loud on the third floor, but no one is home there either.  
3. On the fourth floor, Trevor knocks on the door, and someone is home.  The adult-aged man in his pajamas lets Trevor know that his roommate is in the shower.  Trevor politely asks him to hurry it up and turn off the water because he is flooding the whole building.  To which the dude at the door complains "Maan really?  I can't shower?  I haven't showered in like 3 days!"  

Well what is one more day then?  (See? this work-from-home lifestyle is true for more than just me. Although considering these were three dirty, dead beat dudes and one looked incredibly hung over on the couch, I do not think they are making too much money working from home.  But who am I to judge?  Maybe they are rock stars!)

The dude eventually shuts off the shower and the deluge downstairs begins to whimper out.

The plumbers eventually come and interview the fourth floor bros.  Apparently their shower was clogged so they snaked it.  Ran the water.  It drained.  So they proceeded to shower.  What they did not realize was that their snake only pushed the clog down a bit...right passed the third floor apartment.  So when they showered, their shower drained, but the water only got so far as the third floor clog and what with no where to go the rusty brown water filled up the third floor bathtub, eventually spilled over through their floor, down the walls into the second floor apartment, and by law of gravity spilled down into ours.

Just another proven perk of working from home is being able to keep the bum boys upstairs from completely ruining our lovely, historically old,  vintage little living space we have.  Too bad those work-at-work people on the third floor were not home.  They would have been able to stop this chaos much earlier.  But no, they had to work-at-work and come home to a bath tub, and likely an apartment, soaking in rotten brown dirty water with no explanation.  Now that is something to put on the cons list for having to work-at-work.