Basic Trope: In order to show that a (typically apartment-dwelling) character is poor, the shower doesn't work well or at all.
- Straight: Alice turns on the shower. The tiles are cracked and dingy-looking, the pipes are old and rusty, and the water pressure is terrible. Oh, and there are only two temperatures: scalding hot or freezing cold.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's shower doesn't work at all; she uses baby wipes (or a wet paper towel or washcloth) and dry shampoo, and a liberal coating of deodorant and/or perfume.
- Alice lives not in a shabby little apartment, but in a Big Fancy House.
- Alice is an apartment-dweller, but it appears she lives in a fairly nice apartment; the only not-so-nice part is the shower.
- Alice uses the rinse hose at the kitchen sink to wash up.
- None of Alice's plumbing works at all.
- Alice has to shower at a neighbor's apartment, or at the gym.
- Downplayed: The plumbing is old, so when Bob uses the toilet, the water in Alice's shower goes either hot or cold and/or the pressure drops.
- Justified:
- The plumbing is old and shabby, as is the rest of the apartment.
- The landlord is dragging their feet about getting it fixed, or it would cost less to redo the entire plumbing system than it would to fix the problem with Alice's shower.
- Alice doesn't do her part to keep the Festering Fungus at bay, which damages the fixtures.
- Alice is living in a time or place where indoor plumbing is rare (and typically only available to the extremely wealthy, such as royalty or nobility), or nonexistent. In order to get a day's worth of water, Alice must either draw from a communal well or trek miles on foot to the nearest lake, and since she can only carry so much with her, bathing doesn't happen too often. And a hot bath is out of the question, too, since heating the water takes a lot of wood or charcoal.
- Inverted: The rest of Alice's apartment is shabby, but the shower is extremely nice; the water temperature is always just right, the pipes aren't creaky or rusty, the fixtures and tiles are shiny and new, and the water pressure is perfect. The shower might even have luxury features.
- Subverted:
- Alice let the basement bathroom fall into disrepair, but the upstairs bathroom is clean.
- As the letter from the local Utilities Company (and the excavators digging up the road) shows, it's not that the house has bad plumbing, but that the local water grid is being renovated.
- Double Subverted: Carol lives in the basement, having to put up with the dingy bathroom.
- Parodied:
- Alice uses the shower as a closet.
- People can tell by Alice's smell (as a result of not showering frequently or at all) which apartment building she lives in.
- Alice decides to fix it, except she has no idea what she's doing.
- Alice uses the toilet water to bathe.
- Alice's standard of living actually increases when she goes camping.
- Alice's shower is the plumbing equivalent of The Alleged Car.
- Alice tries to use her broken shower to wash even though Carol is happy to let her use her shower.
- Alice moves into a building whose managers tout how bad their baths are.
- Zig-Zagged: Sometimes the shower works, other times it doesn't. Sometimes it's clean and nice-looking, other times it's dingy.
- Averted:
- Alice's shower works just fine.
- There are no showers or bathtubs In-Universe.
- Enforced: Standardized Sitcom Housing
- Lampshaded: "Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. The shower only works if you..."
- Invoked:
- Alice lives in Perpetual Poverty and she can only afford a shabby little studio. She's just happy to have a roof over her head.
- Alice's family goes from Riches to Rags and they must all reduce their biggest expenses. For Alice, that means fewer and shorter showers, and the shower being in a state of disrepair is an incentive for this form of cutting back.
- Exploited: Alice sues the landlord for not maintaining the building to proper code/standards, as well as for emotional pain and suffering related to the perpetually-broken shower.
- Defied: Alice repairs the shower herself, calls a plumber, or pesters her landlord to fix it.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Alice goes to take a shower but comes out no cleaner than before.
- Played for Drama: Alice is bullied and stuck at the bottom of society when she's usually dirty thanks to her inoperative shower.
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