The building I work in is rather unconventional. This is an understatement in the same way that saying “Lady Gaga is slightly contrived and whorish” is an understatement. Forty-two people are forced to work for 40+ hours a week in what can only be described as a cross between an amenities block and a Turkish prison.
The story behind our woeful working environment goes something like this: At some point back in the 70s (or possibly earlier. The 60s? The 1800s? Early in the Bronze Age?), this company moved into a temporary facility on a block of land that was leased from the government at $1.00 a year. During the first few months of this temporary arrangement (which were intended to be the only few months), the finance department of the company developed a taste for cheap building materials, shoddy stop-gap maintenance measures, and paying a mere 8.3 cents a month in rent. They realized that they could save a phenomenal amount of money by just staying in the temporary facility…forever! All they had to do was ignore the feeble cries of the employees who complained for frivolous things like carpet and a non-leaking roof. Whining little turds.
Fast forward to somewhere between thirty and 6000 years later (although 6000 years seems like too much, so it probably wasn’t the early Bronze Age), and nothing has changed. The building is almost untouched, the maintenance is still shoddy and stop-gappish, and the land is still leased at $1.00 a year; which, particularly in this time of the Global Financial Scaremongering Er I Mean Crisis, has made the chances of us ever moving from these premises a flat, iron-clad zilch.
The air conditioning is so uneven there can be arctic winds at one end of the building, and a sweltering 30+ degree stillness at the other. Some employees are forced to shove cardboard boxes into the ceiling vents to block off the air flow, while others bring two shirts to work every day so they can alternate every hour and maintain some level of dryness.
It gets better. One of the air conditioner intake pumps happens to be situated directly in front of the septic tank (yes, one of the toilets in the building runs off a septic tank), so whenever the tank needs emptying, the entire building smells of excrement for five hours. It’s become quite the phenomenon – it’s classily known as ‘Poo Suck Day’, and everyone who is able to leave their post clears off to the pub for the afternoon. They tried to stop this drop in productivity on one memorable Poo Suck Day by turning off the air conditioner, which caused all the dust in the ceiling to heat up and bake into a thick film over the wiring, which also heated up, and caught fire. The combined stench of faecal matter and burning asbestos is something none of us will forget in a hurry.
But by far the worst thing we have to suffer through in this infernal building is the constant invasion of various pests. Currently next to my desk, not less than a foot from where I’m sitting right this very second, is an insect graveyard. All along one wall of my office, protected from the vacuum cleaner by a poorly designed metal strut, is a centimetre-deep trough of dead bugs.
Within the casing of every fluorescent light in the ceiling rest the remains of hundreds of moths who flapped until they could flap no more. There are so many moth wings blocking the light that the subsequent dappling effect gives the illusion that we are working outside underneath a tree (which is actually not altogether unpleasant).
In summer, swarms of crickets enter suicide pacts with each other and launch themselves into the urinal trough in the men’s toilets, never to escape (and if you think owning a penis gives men a God complex now, you should see us when we are literally holding in our hand the power to destroy life – look out, little Jiminies! It’s a flood!).
And most recently, ants started living in the toilet. Let me repeat that, for effect:
ANTS HAVE STARTED LIVING IN THE TOILET.
No, we don’t know how, either. But I can tell you how we discovered they were there:
When one of these ants bit a coworker on the scrotum.
Let me repeat that, for effect:
AN ANT BIT A DUDE ON THE SCROTUM.
And yet? We are still stuck in this building. Paying $1.00 a year trumps testicle safety every time.
The unfortunate individual who suffered this wound is too embarrassed to fill out an incident report – which, to be perfectly honest, I don’t understand. If I was well endowed enough that, while sitting on the toilet, an ant could clamber aboard my scrotum to bite it, I’d be telling everyone.
So really, he’s not that unfortunate.
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My goodness. Sounds awful. Except the ant/scrotum combination. That’s also piss-funny.
Can you imagine if it was the girl’s loo? That’d be even more embarrassing!
The similarity with my workplace is the air-conditioning. Sweating one minute, freezing the next. You’d think these things would be able to be regulated.