Is a Little Warning Too Much To Ask?

For the second time in less than a week, I have no running water in the apartment.

There is something so maddening about turning the knob on the faucet and hearing that sucking, hissing sound instead of the gurgle of running water. Especially when the reason that you're up and turning the knob on the faucet instead of turning over in your sleep is that the workmen are banging on the walls (or, as it turns out, the pipes in the walls) at 8:30 a.m.

The realization that you won't even be able to ease the pain of the early and rude wake-up with a cup of coffee is even worse.

Now, I understand that things happen and I'm not upset about being inconvenienced by not having any water. I'm angry about the fact that I wasn't given any notice of this shut-off so that I could hoard some water and take care of whatever needed to be done before the shut-off. What if I needed to get to work?

So I called the landlord and pitched a fit. His shady answer was that it was an emergency, that he didn't have any warning himself. If true, that would be fair enough. And it could possibly be true today. But last week, I know it wasn't true because I was here. The water was shut off for a repair to a valve on the radiators. This is something that you have to figure they knew about at least a few minutes before shutting the water off, if not a few days. I pointed this out and he claimed that it wasn't true, that the incident last week was due to a broken pipe. Yeah, right. Again, I WAS HERE! I KNOW what happened! Don't lie to me!

The best part of the whole story is that the state in which I live-- a state with a long history of pandering to big industry and the robber barons at the head, a state with little to no protection for its tenants-- actually requires that the landlord give the tenants 24 hours notice before shutting off the water. I'm not even asking for the whole 24 hours that I have a right to by law. All I want is a few minutes to fill a few containers with water to take care of myself until the repairs are completed.