There is nothing quite so frustrating as moving into a brand new apartment and discovering that that apartment is missing shower curtain rods. Normal curtain rods, the ones that hold up curtains for windows, are sometimes just as annoying when they are hanging up unwanted on windows that you don’t want curtains on, but those can be taken down easily. If you are in a hurry because you’ve just moved somewhere and you really need to take a shower but there’s not a shower curtain, that can be awful.
If there’s not a shower curtain hanging up, then water gets everywhere. That causes problems because the water makes a mess and makes it hazardous to walk around until the water dries. If it is the first time the house has been used, one or two puddles isn’t going to destroy anything if no one slips. If the house frequently has puddles in the same place, the water will usually seep into the floor and ruin the floor.
There are a lot of people who wonder if the floor can ever be ruined to the point where the bathtub comes crashing down through the floor to the next level like it does on so many movies. That is very much a Hollywood thing. What is much more likely to happen is that the floor will show very visible signs of wear and tear long before there’s a hazard of the floor caving in, and the tub crashing down is even more unlikely because the tub is set on the wood of the house, which decays at a rate far slower than the linoleum and drywall. This means that if the problem is left untouched for a very long time, the linoleum will peel and the ceiling below will get water spots, but just about no amount of shower water damage will actually break the bathtub.