It Was a Gusher

Bill, our maintenance man for the shift, squelched his way to the manager's office. He looked like he'd just taken a shower with his uniform on.

    "Krista, there's a pipe leaking in the men's restroom."

I thought the evidence spoke for itself, but Krista had to go with him and see for herself. They came back a few minutes later, and she was now just as soggy as he was. One of the pipes behind the toilet was a little loose, and some customer decided to give it a drop kick. Busted it right off. This wasn't a little trickle. It was leaking like a broken fire hydrant. 

Just find the shut-off valve, clean up, and everything is fine, right? Wrong. The shut-off was in a little maintenance closet that we lost the key to almost a year earlier. It took a while for them to get in there. I'm not even sure how that finally happened. I'd been pulled out of the kitchen and was busy with the snow shovel, trying to send as much water as I could out the side door of the restaurant. Someone built a dam with rags to keep it from invading the kitchen. At its worst, there were places in the lobby where the water was close to four inches deep. We had to shut down until we managed to get on top of things. Someone came in and fixed the pipe. I got to wipe down the walls and ceiling in the restroom and then helped mop up the rest. That was the cleanest the floor got in the entire time I worked there.