@metalfan101 If you have talked it out, apologized profusely and offered to replace anything and everything you damaged that is all you can do for now. Next time you will be ready and you will cancel your social plans to attend to an property emergency you created. The roommates will be upset unless and until the carpet is brought back to good. They probably resent not being able to walk barefoot, smell smells, and worry about fecal matter. How much carpet is there and is it a throw rug? If a throw rug, toss it and get another. If it is carpet make sure it is professionally cleaned including the pad and parts underneath. If it is really bad will public safety cut it out and replace? Accidents can happen to anyone including your roommates. There will be many more toilet problems in the future so learn to turn off the water and plunge immediately. Soon things will likely settle down and that situation will become a thing in distant memory
@readthetealeaves I did give my roommate money to replace the things that got damaged and I even offered to help in anyway to get the room smelling nice, and to get everything back to the way it was since I was the one who caused the flooding. The whole hallway is a carpet. So my roommate is calling people to get it fixed including her dad (who works at the college), and I can tell she’s upset, and I feel bad that the flood I caused from the clogged toilet was my fault and I’m the person causing this whole mess to happen.
The rug and foam padding of the whole unit needs to be pulled and replaced…brought down to concrete and the concrete bleached to sanitized thoroughly.
The smell will never be eliminated until all floor covering is removed, cleaned by a hazardous materials team then replaced…don’t forget to replace the baseboards and drywall if the walls were soaked by the toilet overflow…
It sounds like there was a LOT of water spilled. Normally when a toilet overflows there is one tank of water spilled Did you keep flushing to try to clear the clog? If so never do that again.
I have to assume that this is non residential type toilet with no actual tank. Otherwise the story is incomprehensible.
@TomSrOfBoston I did actually
@sybylla there is a tank
@beerme we’re at a new apartment on campus, the ironic thing my room mates all like the new apartment we’re in than our old one
Nice that your school was able to place you and your room mates in a cleaner living environment.
OP, sorry this happened to you. You seem sincerely sorry for the way you handled it and I think you need to “let it go” now. Don’t beat your self up, we all sometimes make the wrong decision. And geez, this isn’t the end of the world even if some people are making you feel that way. There’s a saying “don’t sweat the small stuff”. What’s done is done,you’ve done everything you could to right the wrong, its time for everyone to back off.
I don’t think anyone is trying to make you feel bad. I know I just wanted you to understand the thought process so that you could make a better decision the next time something happens. Things happen to everyone. Young people without experience need guidance. OP, you seem to have a caring heart and that will help you go a long way.
This is one of those ‘becoming an adult’ experiences that you won’t forget and with time, hopefully it will become just a funny footnote with your roommates. You are probably used to being a kid and having other people fix the big problems. As an adult you sometimes have to fix them yourself (or in this case, skip the party and stick around while the problem was being fixed and help out). Sometimes we make the wrong call and realize we’ve let people down, and you have to just apologize and don’t beat yourself up but do better the next time.
I agree with TQfromtheU, just trying to help you get through and grow from the experience
Is it just me, or do I feel badly for the roommate who was making calls to remedy the situation?
See, everyone in the apartment was and continues to be affected.
Now, you have a different residence?
You are sorry because they are angry with you, for not dealing immediately with the flood. It’s an emotional reaction to their feelings of frustration. Them being annoyed? NAW, they’re angry!
If I were getting a little $5 gift card, it would be insulting. An apology for being inconsiderate and selfish would help.
Your roommates had to deal with this for a full evening and days after the flood.
They had to clean up the mess in order to just function that night; use their towels, avoid toilet water, pick up things off the floor, get laundry started, all while you celebrated. Then, you threw it in their faces, by bringing a friend back, LATE, from the party who made things worse! Having the audacity to go to class the next morning without immediately dealing with it would have made me very angry. But that’s just me.
When you live with people, you can’t be selfish because you are sharing a space.
Now, your roommates have to adjust their addresses and notify their parents/family that they have a new address.
I don’t think you get that if you cause a problem, affecting others, your needs and plans have to go by the wayside.
They are not going to forget so, come next year, you may not have the same roommates.
Truthfully, this could have happened to anyone of you guys: your flush, your fault, it seems to be running here. I hope you, OP, recognize that clogged toilets happen. They just do. Backed-up toilets happen. There was probably a long standing, slowly building problem to begin with, unless you feel you put too much in too dhort a time into the bowl.
It is, for all intents and purposes, a multi-use, public bowl into which people have probably placed all sorts of items which should not have been flushed.
The concern here, and your posting, indicate that your response to the overflow was less than 100% attentive and diligent at taking care of what needed to be taken care of.
At my house, in my college suite and in my apartment, everyone would have been expected to hop to it and take care of all that which was able to be salvaged. Thinking back to the people I roomed with from college up until marriage, I can think of only two who would have made absutely no effort to help. Thinking back they were really the same type of person, never having been asked in their lives to be useful to anyone but themselves.
You sound like you know better than that, but simply did not do what can be said to be your best in those moments where it was required.
No need for self-flagellation, no need to indulge in worry about who will hold you responsible forever, no need to hold yourself so forever.