Last night, the night security guard knocked to let me know that there was a drain clog next door, and I shouldn't use the kitchen sink, the washing machine, or the dishwasher (all of which I had been using less than an hour before). This was due to the fact that the drains connect in the wall. Ok, no problem.
I then woke up this morning to the sound of something knocking in my kitchen cabinet under the sink. I opened the door, concerned it was a mouse or something, only to find the end of a pipe auger flopping around on the floor. As it was coming out of the trap under my sink, and noting that I did not have a bad case of Ghost Plumbers, I assumed that my neighbor had hired a plumber, who wasn't very good at what he was doing.
I went next door, to ask what they were doing, and found my neighbor and her "friend" operating the auger. I told them that they'd broken through my pipe, to which the friend replied, "oh, I was afraid of that."
Afraid you'd bore through someone else's pipes? What kind of plumber are you? "No, I'm just her friend." Oh, the type of plumber that isn't actually trained or a plumber at all. Great.
He then proceded to ease the auger out of my cabinet, leaving a nice hole in the trap. He offered to fix it, which I declined in favor of getting someone who knew what the fuck he was doing.
I piled a bunch of paper towels to blot up the mess in my cabinet, and then left for work. A day full of trading phone calls back and forth with the maintenance guy and the rental office and the plumber they called, and I have an appointment with a plumber tomorrow at 8:30. I returned home fearing that I'd find my apartment flooded, to be relieved that my paper towels had contained most of the mess.
I went next door again to make sure that my neighbor wasn't going to use that sink, and that she hadn't during the day, which she agreed to and claimed she hadn't. However, "he fixed the clog!" Great. Wonderful. That's as good as having a coat full of puppies.
Back in my kitchen, I start to clean up the mess, and find that my paper towels are kind of a messy soup. Thanks to Target's crazy sale strategy, I am in possession of a 12 pack of paper towels, so I use a half roll (and a pile of bleach wipes) to clean up the mess, and then wedge my kitchen garbage can under the trap to catch anything else that might drip out.
Upon washing up, I realized why the clog was gone. The burning sensation in the hand that wiped up the mess suggested that the majority of the liquid I cleaned up was drain opener. Yay sodium hydroxide!
