It's official -- my office should be condemned along with the entire building

[AndrewR]

So, I'm sitting there at my desk, and I see some movement on the other side of the office. There's a rat climbing up a pipe (electrical, I think) to a hole in the ceiling into which it disappears! I go to take a closer look, and there's a little nose with whiskers staring out. I threw a pen at it, and it disappeared.

Now, add this to the mold blackened ceiling tiles both inside my office and in the hallway, the peeling paint everywhere, and the 11 out of 20 lights burned out in the ceiling in the hallway, and you get an idea of what a crappy building I work in. Hilariously enough, the Japanese won't replace the building YET because it's...get this...ONLY 36 years old, not 40. The Japanese haven't even had control of the island for that long after WWII -- we turned it back to them in 1972.

So, the next time you look around your workspace and think it's bad, think of our rat-infested, moldy and dark warehouse-turned-office-building. 🙂

 

[moshquerade]

eek!

i could not work there. no way - no how.

 

[SaturnX]

eh, it's only rats.. could be worse... like locusts...

--Mark

 

[AndrewR]

Originally posted by: moshquerade
eek!

i could not work there. no way - no how.

I supervise a woman (22 yr old) in the same office, and when I told her I saw a rat, she hopped on the desk until I told her to put her feet on the floor. It was rather hilarious.

I've named the rat -- it's Mortimer! The bug guys put out some big rat traps. We'll if there's anything with a broken back in them tomorrow.

 

[Ogg]

so you dont feel alone!!!

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Consider that in the engineering lab at my work, we are trying to get an electrician in to change some of the wiring around after a problem arose when the lab was rearranged (to look better to people taking tours). Most outlets have a single breaker, but the following is attached to a single breaker:
8 or 9 computers
2 oscilloscopes
1 DMM
4 soldering irons
2 power supplies
1 network analyzer
2 function generators

Any suprize that the breaker occasionally trips?


...and we had ant problems for about 6 months. (though zapping them with an ESD gun was amusing) And there is mice. Unless a hawk has come around and claimed it, there's a dead bird right outside our front door.

 

[Modeps]

With your reasons for condemning a building, NYC should be condemned as well... yes, the whole city. stop being a baby.

 

[AndrewR]

Originally posted by: Modeps
With your reasons for condemning a building, NYC should be condemned as well... yes, the whole city. stop being a baby.

The rat doesn't bother me, really, except for the fact that I keep food in the office for when I'm working 14+ hour shifts during exercises, and I'd rather have that food vermin-free. However, the lack of light in the hallway makes it very difficult to open my door since I have to use a combination lock which has an LCD readout that does NOT have a backlight. Plus, we have a similar issue to the engineering room mentioned above, that one of our breakers likes to go out every once in awhile (worst time was the DAY BEFORE a major inspection), and it's currently been tripped since last week so half our outlets are down. I can't conduct briefings in my office right now (display TV has no power), and I have power cables lying across the walkway, making a nice tripping hazard.

I'm in the most powerful military in the world, and I work in a ghetto building, literally. We're supposed to have a new building, sometime in 2007. That's the planned date, however, so most likely it won't be until 2008 or later. I leave in May, however, and I'm going to a headquarters so I'll probably go from slum to mansion-quality.

Heck, back in 1995, I was at Pope AFB for a summer, and they had ROTARY PHONES!!! Only nine years ago -- that was ridiculous. I had to call various places that had touchtone menus, and I had to sit on the phone and wait for someone to pick up.