I wouldn't have even flinched if they had said that it would take too long and would come back in the morning. It's the Sunday thing. The damn Sunday thing. I have never been religious, so to me I dont see the difference between Sunday and any other day. As long as you have your two days off a week, what is the difference? I would love to have Tuesday and Wednesday off because you could actually get things done if need be or you could relax. I used to have midweek days off before I became a teacher and I miss the hell out of them.

Again, some people are missing the main point in the OP.

It isn't that it's impossible to have work done, even fixing hot water, on Sundays here in Switzerland. It is possible. The issue is that this particular company, engaged by the management company of the apartment block, doesn't. And, one assumes, the same management company doesn't consider this an emergency worth paying extra for.

My oh my, this 2012 is really something...no hot water on Sundays, demonic winds in Switzerland, service still slow as hell and Adrian is our voice of reason!!

So if, perhaps, this particular company gave all of their employees Wednesday off, and your hot water died on a Tuesday, it would be okay for them to come back Thursday because the day off wasn't Sunday?

Seriously, these guys are entitled to their day off. It's not fair to rant at the workmen if the job would've needed hours more to fix and they reasonably stick to their contracted work hours. Instead, the fault lies with your building management company for not contracting with a company that offers 24-hour service - as there are many companies who will come any time, day or night, seven days a week. It is a pain being without hot water - but ranting about the plumbers won't fix it. Save your ire for the building manager ...

I don't blame the workers one bit. I blame the system. Every service company I have ever dealt with until I moved here is open every day. So it wouldn't matter when your heater broke, someone would be on call. I just don't know why people think that a business open 7 days means employees don't get days off. It might be that Carl has Wednesdays and Thursday off and Bill has Saturday and Sunday off. No everyone has to have the same hours and days off. Why is a Saturday day off better or worse than a Thursday day off? Can someone explain that to me?

It's all happening because there will be no 2013.

Dick Clark died. No Rockin' New Years Eve 2013. The Mayans were right.

Carl and Bill are in a long term gay relationship and are deeply depressed as they can never spend a day off together. Plus, they live in Zurich.

some people are hard of thinking.

another reason not to get your honey where you get your money

My experiences with the landlord have been super positive. Maybe you can schedule a meeting with him/her? Not the regie, nor the contracted handyguys company..

Cold shower is cool. Toughen up a bit!

No, cold shower is cold. (But I really shouldn't pander to you)

Don't worry. According to l_ib's pet mantra, Switzerland is still stuck in the 'seventies, so we have a few more decades to go.

One thing we never found out is how many people are affected by this outage (outrage ). How many children? How many older people?

Would this have a bearing on what the owner / landlord / regie / repairmen should have done?

Jokes aside, I actually thought about what would happen to Switzerland in case of a real emergency....and after some in depth studies, soul searching and calculating of the tide and current, I came to the conclusion, that we would all be majorly f*$%ed. For one, look at the behavior of folks at Migros on a Saturday..some elderly lady threatened me with a serious a** whopping, if I wouldn't relinquish "her" apple pie with the 25% sticker which she saw first and always gets each Saturday. Another factor, the equipment. Meaning the Zivilschutz thingy are way outdated and therefore obsolete and won't be of much use in case they're actually needed. The other main issue I believe is infrastructure, as all the roads are narrow and many places only have one major road into town and one leading out. This would make it extremely hard for rescuers etc. to access the area.

Silly people our ancestors. Why didn't they take in account, the facts, that car the size of a medieval church would be inventend?
The equipment of the Zivilschutz might be not the newest one, but I am very grateful for their existence. In the fifteen years the house of my parents got twice flooded and guess who were there and helped them out of their misery (and it didn' take six and more months as in other countries).

Ya there is a fine difference between handing out some blankets or going into a devastated area to save lives.

Anyway OP, I found some consolidation, these people have been waiting on some windows and heat for over 12 days now.
http://www.blick.ch/news/schweiz/bas...id1858787.html

Aaahh, what would the country be without those dear old people.

Have kayak - it's blazing guns all the way to the North Sea.

which it wasn't.

A similar thing happened to us 2 winters ago over the New Year's holiday (3 days), no heat or hot water. It was bitter cold and snowing, and by the second day the apartment temp was 40F. Couldn't reach the management company or a service company. By the third day we packed it in and stayed at a hotel and promptly sent the bill to the management company which they paid. Don't know if that would have worked for you....

Even if it wasn't as cold as it was we may have done the same thing. Don't see why we need to be inconvenienced just because people don't work on Sundays. What if it was a big deal such as you had a job interview on Monday morning but had to take a flannel shower??? (this has happened to me before and totally frustrating and stressful).

I wonder what they would tell CHUV or any of the ski resorts if they lost heat or electricity? Oh those people in ICU can wait until Monday or those people stuck on top of the mountain, they'll be fine until Monday....Know I'm being a bit of a brat....

OP, I am with you on this one. Shopping hours is one thing, but I don't see why, in 2012 in Switzerland, someone should be left for 2 days without water. I agree with those who said that the blame is on the management company, but the worker saying to me "It's 5 o'clock, sayonara" and "Oh, by the way, I don't work on Sunday" would have p***ed me off alright.
Next time, I'll try and tell my client that they have to delay the acquisition of their target from Monday to Tuesday, because I cannot possibly be bothered to come in on a Sunday and finish up, and get Tuesday off instead of Sunday. Let's see how well they take that- it's not an emergency after all, right?