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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/dawek65 on 2026-01-24 15:28:44+00:00.
This actually happened two months ago, but I still think about it every few minutes or so, lol. I moved to a city (Europe) to start a new life and rented a room in a flat with a shared kitchen and bathroom. After I moved in, I was informed that the washing machine hose (which stood in the shared bathroom) was not securely attached and had to be placed manually into the toilet bowl each time. I was quickly shown how to do it, and I thought I understood.
The following day, the two other flatmates left the city, and I stayed alone in the flat. I needed to wash my sheets, so I proceeded to do the laundry. I remembered to insert the hose into the toilet, and I did the first load, which went fine. Then I put in the second load, so, you know, the washing machine was running for about three hours altogether. About 40 minutes before the cycle ended, I lay down in my room. After half an hour, I heard a bell ring. It was my neighbors from the apartment below, screaming that their flat was being flooded.
I realized that the hose had come out of the toilet, so the water spilled onto the floor and then made its way down to the flat below. The reason was that I had positioned the hose the wrong way, which turned out to be too loose -the hose wasn’t secured properly.
I quickly tried to collect the water, but the damage had already been done. It was all very unfortunate because the floor in our bathroom is crooked, so the water didn’t even stop there and instead flowed like a river through the apartment (sadly avoiding my room, which made it impossible for me to notice it myself a bit earlier). After wiping the floor, I went downstairs to see what it looked like in the apartment below, and water was leaking from many holes. The neighbors were furious, and the lady called me the worst neighbor they had ever had (and rightfully so - they had lived there for 30 years and nothing like this had ever happened before).
Now there are water stains on the ceilings and walls everywhere down there, and the apartment is going to be renovated in February. I have an enormous sense of guilt because my careless and stupid action caused so much destruction. Later I also found out from my roommates that the hose had come out like that a couple of times before, but there were more people in the flat at the time and it was noticed almost immediately. Still, I was told that in those cases the hose had been attached better anyway and that those incidents were just unfortunate. My setup, though, was so careless that it was basically doomed to fail. I completely lacked the imagination to consider what could potentially happen and didn’t foresee an outcome that, in hindsight, should have been obvious.
TL;DR: I flooded my neighbors’ flat by inserting the washing machine hose into the toilet bowl incorrectly.