I've had this happen before a few times. One of the "best" ones was when the job supt. was following me around, no it was more dogging me around, and we got to the master bathroom. I asked if it was OK to test the whirlpool tub. "Yep".

Same kind of a thing, except I also had the bonus of it also was leaking at the drain connection. I would have to guess that maybe 80% of the water in the tub went someplace other that down the drain.

Got to love it. Do these guys just never check their work before they walk away from the job?

No, I'm not going to pull off the covers. First of all, not all tubs have access (we write that up way too many times), other times the covers are sealed with caulking. In this case, there were two screws holding the cover on. The cover, by the way, way the entire side of the tub. 

It's one thing to quickly look at a dishwasher drain connection because, 1. we are looking under the sink anyway, and 2. it's very east to verify. But we don't take off the base cover and look at the connection there. I don't think it's our place.

We have a reasonable assumption to believe that everything is working as intended unless we are notified otherwise. You know, the notes that say "Don't run the dishwasher" or "Tub faucet is broken, we have ordered parts". I see those notes every once in a while. When I go into a new house, I assume it is ready to go,unless told otherwise. Lke when I was going around with the builders supt., I asked him permission to test it.

In the case of this tub, it would have looked just fine had I opened the cover. The defect turned out to be a defective fitting at one of the jets. I guess it was cracked and came flying off as soon as water went thru it under pressure.

This is not exactly a common occurrence, it's only happened a hand full of times in the past almost 20 years. It is fun when it does though.