Photographing the unphotographable

Ah yes, the classic "it don't work, pls fix" issue report.

What is the nature of the issue? Is there water pressure? Is the water cold? Does it look/smell/taste contaminated?
What is the extent of the issue? Does it only affect a single faucet, multiple faucets, the apartment, or the entire building?
When did the issue start? Is it constant or intermittent?
Does the cold water present the same issue?
(optional) What steps have been taken to remedy the issue?

And asking for a picture resolves any of these questions... how?
- It doesn't, both sides are dumb.
  (edit) Actually, it confirms that the water is clean and that there is water pressure.
I mean...those are all valid questions.
Any or all of which could've been asked.
- It boils down to experience with diagnosing that kind of problem when reported by a common person.
  The amateur landlord so common in our age isn't going to have that experience and unless they work in an area where it's common to have to diagnose and fix technical problems they're not going to be used to the kind of sistematic step by step approach used to pin down the exact nature of a problem so will have trouble even improvising it effectivelly.
Too bad this isn't tech support and it's the landlords job to show up and troubleshoot it himself. The tenant bears no responsibility here besides informing the landlord there is a problem.
- It's the tenant that has no hot water though. The more information they give the landlord, the faster they will get hot water again.
- but just a bit of cooperation from the tenants side could help him prepare a lot better for the job
- They’re not responsible for fixing the problem, but they are responsible for ensuring that the problem is fixed, since until it’s fixed the don’t have hot water.
  In this case ensuring that the problem is fixed most importantly entails telling the person who has to do the fixing as much about the problem as possible.
  If you need help with something, you have to help your helper if you want it to be effective.

"the hot water isn't working" could be understood to mean "the water in the hot water tap is not hot", but it could also be understood to mean "the water is not flowing out of the hot water tap".

The picture helps clarify the original statement. OP, this interaction is not nearly as bizarre as you make it out to be. It's pretty typical of virtually all support requests. It's incredibly common, when asking for support, that the requester assumes information is obvious when it is in fact not.

It's still kind of a weird way to request that information. They could have just upfront asked "is the hot water tap not working at all, or is it just not hot?".
- Having worked in IT I can tell you that often asking for specifics (even simple ones like what you said) will just get you a reply of "I don't know it's just broken. Fix it." If you even get a response at all. Asking for a screenshot (or a picture in this case) is an action that you are requiring the user to take and is much more likely to at least get a response even if the response isn't always helpful.
  If the landlord had just asked for clarification I wouldn't be surprised if they just got a response of "It just doesn't work." Which is far less helpful than even that picture.
Yep. During my very short (6 mos) stint as a tech support rep for Dell, I've learned to assume your customer is an idiot. Even when they're using techie terms or jargon (and at times more so). Never assume other things besides that or you'll probably regret it.
You have to be very clear and precise. A single misunderstanding can take a simple problem a lot of time to get fixed.
- 15 out of 16 times, or more so, they're useless.
This is making me start to feel cold shivers due to barelly supressed memories...
While I agree with everything you wrote, this conversation is far from a typical support request. Both sides are fucking idiots without any common sense.
- I'm assuming you recognize this is you're ex's kitchen sink.
“the hot water isn’t working” could be understood to mean "the hot water refuses to go out and get a job", but it could also be understood to mean "the hot water is just sitting around in it's boxers all day drinking beer".
In America we have both in the same faucet so the photo is less useful over here
- Not sure what you're talking about. Hot and cold water definitely use different pipes. I'm not even sure how that would work with one pipe unless you were mixing right at the water heater or something.

See, you may laugh but the landlord now knows that the water is still flowing, so the cause isn't an area-wide outage or a burst pipe, but instead there's a fault in the system that heats the water.

Probably giving them too much credit. If they wanted to know that they probably would have asked specifically "Is the water still running?".
Well yeah. They didn't say the water isn't working, just that the hot water isn't.
- Bold move assuming a user report is accurate.

Have you tried turning it off and then on again?

Yes, Moss. Did you catch that ludicrous display last night?
- Thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.

None of y'all are plumbers and most of y'all work in IT and it fucking shows.

This is not a case where a photo is required or even all that helpful.

A photo shows that water is running. Is it hot, is it cold, is it lukewarm? Who knows?? Certainly not the landlord.

Probing questions sure would have been helpful. Like is the water lukewarm or cold?

If it's either it doesn't matter, the heater is not working and a plumber is required.

Now what if the water isn't running? Well then the response would indicate that.

"No there's no water at all when I turn on the hot water."

Ok that's an entirely different problem, could be the heater, could be someone turned a valve off.

But even that much information isn't all that important because no matter what the problem is, or where it's located, the tenant will not be able to resolve this issue, a plumber is required. They'll need access to the premises, because water heaters are generally inside the unit, which means the tenant will likely need to be present when the plumber shows up.

The plumber is absolutely not going to show up with a water heater based on what information he can get out of a text. He's going to come in, and investigate the issue. Sometimes it's a quick fix, sometimes it's a problem. Generally the tenant is going to have absolutely no way of resolving it themselves, and generally a landlord wouldn't want them to.

This is not an IT ticket, it's a "call a fucking plumber my shits broken " ticket.

None of y'all are plumbers and most of y'all work in IT and it fucking shows
You're not a plumber and you lack problem fixing skills and it fucking shows. 🙄
The photo shows:
water is running, meaning: the faucet works, the pipe to the faucet works, the water is not shut off
the faucet seems to be of a two valve kind, meaning: if the tenant is not an idiot and didn't turn on the wrong valve, and they did wait a reasonable time for hot water to come out, then the problem is not with the faucet but with the heater
the faucet can not be the problem, meaning a plumber does not need to carry a spare faucet, but the pipes could be hooked up wrong (hot pipe to cold valve and vice versa), which could be and easy fox for the landlord themselves without having to pay a plumber
Probing questions would be only useful if the tenant spent some effort on answering them, instead of, for example:
is the water lukewarm or cold?
A: Yes.
what if the water isn't running?
A: There is no hot water.
This is not an IT ticket, it's a general problem solving procedure issue.

Finally! A use for a Pixel 8 Pro's temperature sensor!

Tenant providing bear minimum information and impatient landlord. Engaging post OP.

It reminds me of a client at a former workplace. The client says, the popup window doesn't open, and sends a screenshot showing the underlying window with the popup window not being there.

Or the client sending all written content as screenshots of the word files.

Do expensive phones have infra-red cameras nowadays?

You specifically want an external accessory like FLIR for that, only a rare few industrial range smartphones have heat cameras built in
Digital photo cameras often actually filter out infrared. But even if they wouldn’t it probably would be hard to tell if something is warmer than the surrounding by looking at a photo or video. What you need is a specific device that is calibrated for a specific spectrum of infrared, such as a thermographic camera.
I think there was actually at least one smartphone that had a thermographic camera installed, but that’s a very specific use case for e.g. construction work.
No.
Pixel 8 Pro has a thermometer. Not sure if it works on water.
- Who said anything about "on" water? Is the Pixel 8 Pro waterproof... and does it work "under"-water?... 😛
Some of the Ulefone Armor phones have IR cameras. Unless you love construction it's probably not the best purchase for the average person.
No but my cheap work phone does have an adapter.
They do on the Yautja planet.
Some do yes we have FLIR on the cat S62

I imagine he only asked so that in court he could say that he asked only for you to become combative, that's proving that you were responsible for the issue not getting fixed.

No, that's just false. The landlord can't avoid responsibility because a tenant isn't polite.
- No, but they'll try
It sounds like one of two things to me:
For a small landlord: some kind of hack taught at a "get rich quick" slumlording class. Something to add friction to the exchange, so the problem either fixes itself or the tenant forgets/misses a message.
For a big corpo landlord: probably complying with some really stupid corpo policy surrounding "objective evidence" in a "not my job" kind of way.
“The how water is not working” is just bad phrasing. “There’s no hot water” describes the problem better. Boiler issue. Burners go out. Boilers go bad every 5 years. Owning a house is becoming a burden. Shit like that.
- No cause that may imply hot water doesn’t come out. A better phrase would be that the water is always cold.

Do you have a thermometer?

So what kind of photo would you send?
- A photo of the water heater. The landlord could have been clearer though