The economy’s been on a wild ride lately, with tariffs, data center construction, and a slew of other issues sending many Americans’ bank accounts into a financial crisis. But the one that every adult dreads and can’t escape from has always been bills, and one Alabama woman barely kept herself together when she received her water utility bill from last month, amounting to an outrageous $760. Considering how she lives alone in her studio apartment and goes to work, it’s almost impossible for her to have used that much water, unless she had lived in the shower.
“But I don’t think I could take enough showers in a year to justify $760,” the woman explained on r/Wellthatsucks. It all began early in the morning when she briefly checked her phone: “Saw it at 3am, and proceeded to freak out the rest of the morning, during my workout, and first few hours at work.” Fortunately, her boss was very understanding and even let her get off early to head to the water office in the city to get things resolved.
“Are you picking up the tab for the entire building?” jokingly questioned a commenter in her post. Several dozen others chimed in, strongly believing the cause was a leak in the woman’s apartment. “Water is around $0.0007/gallon, so they’d have been able to fill almost exactly 1.5 Olympic swimming pools at that price,” calculated one user. “It must be a huge leak!” another exclaimed in response.
Lo and behold, they were correct: the woman’s landlord did confirm that there was a leak somewhere beneath her apartment building that was specifically affecting her laundry room. That’s why the outrageous bill was under her name and address. Luckily, the landlord is “very helpful and apologetic so far,” understanding that it’s not her fault and allegedly not pressing her to pay the bill.
In the end, the $760 water bill for the Alabama woman seems to have been resolved, while the pipe leak will likely take some more time to be repaired and maintained. At the very least, the cause wasn’t her accidentally leaving one of her faucets on or a corporate AI data center being built nearby.
