Baboon Pirates

Scribbles and Scrawls from an unrepentant swashbuckling primate.

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Location: Texas, United States

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

I Hate This Building

It's Like A Vertical Slum, Only Without Noticeable Rats

Never buy a used high-rise building. Take your banker to a high-class titty bar to get him drunk and pliable, float some junk bonds, do anything! Just don't go secondhand when you're looking to relocate 5,000 workers.

Like the Clintonistas that ravaged the White House before turning over the keys to the Bushies, the large energy company that had this place prior to our occupation must've known they were on their way out, 'cause they apparently did little or no upkeep on the property.

We've got dozens of water fountains scattered throughout the building, but you can't use 'em. They've taken down the "DO NOT DRINK" signs (causes poor morale, they say...) but everyone knows not to take a sip lest you contract a virulent mix of lead poisoning and Legionaire's Disease. We get bottled water shipped in almost daily so we don't have to live off of the Coke machine and the dew that collects on the windows on cool mornings.

There's no hot water most of the time. Rumor has it that it makes it up to the 5th floor, but chills down to room temperature before getting any higher up the pipes.

Twice now I've tried to rotate the sink faucet neck (which is designed to do that, btw) only to have it come off in my hand and have water shoot to the ceiling.

The fire alarms have a mind of their own. There's been more than one occasion on two separate floors where there's been a full evac of the building (usually caused by one asshole burning their microwave popcorn, and another asshole panicking!) that our department never got word of. Our first clue that anything was amiss was the Fire Department trucks pulling up out front, alerting us to crowds of co-workers out on the sidewalks.

Then there's the elevators. Don't even get me started on those abominations. First of all, we have a 13th floor, but not a 3rd floor. Go figure. We have two banks of elevators. The ones feeding the upper floors are actually pretty good. They whisk you up and down with no problems at all. Unfortunately, I no longer work up on 20. Now I have to use the lower bank, which are the red-haired stepchildren of the elevator family. Even the crappy pneumatic elevators in Tranquility Park garage work better than these POS's.

Every night going home, I never know which of 5 Boxcars Of Doom is going to attempt to get me downstairs. Will it be Groany, Creaky, Jitters, Slowpoke, or Deathtrap??

We're having our ventilating system shut down this week so they can do some repairs on the water lines that feed the cooling system. This ensures that we'll spend an unknown amount of time living on stale air as the building slowly heats to a parboiling level.

Sigh. I've gotta figure out a way to work from home...

Anyone else have a crappy building they work in?