4th time toiet has flooded!
I'm a manager for a store in the mall. Since May of this year we've had our toilet clog 4 times and flood our store (it being in the stock room, out of sight, out of mind, when we realise the toilet is overflowing it's too late). Every time we've called plumbers to fix the problem, and it works for a short time, then within a month or so it's overflowing again. After the 3rd flooding my store's home office requested the mall to call a plumber to find out if there's a problem in main lines. The plumbers my company hired told me they found "white rats" which I had always thought tampons were flushable, BUT I made sure all my girls at work knew not to flush them. The plumber the mall hired informed me they found white rats and paper towels clogging up the lines. Since then it has been 2-3 months with no problem, my staff is tired of flooding, and we JUST got the old nasty stained flooded carpet out and new carpet in. I trust my employees when they say they have been following the "only toilet paper can be flushed" rule. Well yesterday, Saturday our toilet has flooded for the 4th time!
I've worked at this store for 10 years now and have NEVER had an overflowing toilet until NOW, even with my staff flushing tampons in the years prior. A lot of changes have been made in our mall, it had been expanded and updated. We are directly across from the food court and the public bathrooms. The public bathrooms have been greatly updated from being 4 stalls to 10 in the ladies room, as for the mens I have no idea! That was completed by Nov of last year.
In April of this year the store right next to us was expanded and updated putting their toilet on the opposite side of the wall to ours. I know in the past they've come and asked if we could spare them a roll of toilet paper every now and then, being neighborly I always shared. My assistant manager once got tired of sharing our supplies of bags and what not with them on a constant basis since it comes out of our profits. When 1 of my employees got off work Saturday she went to our neighboring store to use their restroom to change clothes for a wedding she was heading to (since our's wasn't suitable at that moment), and I asked her to see if they had toilet paper. When she came back she told me they had kleneex on one side and paper towels on the other, but NO toilet paper.
Is it possible that they are clogging the lines and we end up being directly affected from their lack of responsibility? If so how can this be proven? Because I know my store is doing everything right, and being socked with a plumbing bill every other month is not fair! Not to mention the damaging of merchandise! Again we've NEVER had this problem before and I can not understand why out of the blue we are! Any insight would be appreciated!