Yesterday was a good day at the library. Company X FINALLY sent someone to repair our public printers (which have been down for several weeks), so now we only have one out of service (it needs a part, of course).
Our alarm system, which had been malfunctioning for several days, requiring a bypass (sounds like open heart surgery, doesn't it? Sometimes it feels like it - with ME as the patient!), was repaired by a very nice technician who actually asked for me so he could give me an update before he left - amazing!
I contacted the company that supports our color copiers (not our black and white copiers - that's a DIFFERENT company) and scheduled a service call to put our color copier back in service (which has been down since May). I'm hoping they will be out by next week sometime - that would be awesome.
The person in charge of the city tech support department called to tell me that all of our computers will be upgraded next week, which supposedly will help with some of the issues we've been having. We'll see, but it was good to hear anyway.
We got a new volunteer who is in library school and is a workaholic - she got SO much done it was wonderful.
I got my odious monthly reports finished ON TIME! Whoo-hoo!
The A/C didn't go off - it stayed on ALL DAY!
And (this is not technically library related, but it really made my day), my very generous BF gave me a 1 terabyte (!!) external hard drive for my computer at home. What a nice guy. :-)
Showing posts with label a/c. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a/c. Show all posts
Friday, September 5, 2008
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Woe the building
I work in a building that's less than 4 years old. In spite of its youth, we have constant problems with the building. Sometimes it seems like it's falling down around our ears.
Our A/C (which I blogged about in a recent post) goes out every time we have a power outage, which seems to be at least once or twice a month. It usually takes an entire day to get it fixed, and since my library is in a very warm part of the country, we have to endure 85+ conditions for way too long. It's been the bane of my existence this summer.
Our outside lights frequently don't work at all. When we leave at closing time, it is often completely dark. Repair personnel have come out more than once to "fix" it but it keeps getting unfixed somehow. We have taken to carrying flashlights with us when we leave.
There's always something wrong in our public restrooms. Seems like there's always a customer screaming at us because the automatic faucets don't work or the toilets flush too fast. (And don't even get me started on the day someone left a "gift" for us on the floor in the men's restroom. Gross.)
Our floor covering is carpet tiles, which shouldn't be a problem except the chairs that were purchased for the computers are very heavy, solid oak chairs that dig in between the tiles and pull them up ALL THE TIME. Why didn't they purchase chairs that would slide easily over the carpet tiles? It drives us nuts and of course is a tripping hazard. City repair people re-glue the tiles but of course they get pulled up again, over and over and over. I report at least three loose carpet tiles every month.
We discovered a few weeks ago that the brick facing on the outside of the building was coming loose. The builders failed to properly secure the bricks so now a whole section is sagging away from the structure. It looks pretty bad. They are supposed to repair it but who knows when they will get around to it.
Let's see...what else? We had raw sewage back up into our public restrooms the other day due to some work that was being done on our outside sewer drain. That was fun.
You would think in a building this new we wouldn't have all these issues. That's what you get when you go with the lowest bidder. Sigh...
Our A/C (which I blogged about in a recent post) goes out every time we have a power outage, which seems to be at least once or twice a month. It usually takes an entire day to get it fixed, and since my library is in a very warm part of the country, we have to endure 85+ conditions for way too long. It's been the bane of my existence this summer.
Our outside lights frequently don't work at all. When we leave at closing time, it is often completely dark. Repair personnel have come out more than once to "fix" it but it keeps getting unfixed somehow. We have taken to carrying flashlights with us when we leave.
There's always something wrong in our public restrooms. Seems like there's always a customer screaming at us because the automatic faucets don't work or the toilets flush too fast. (And don't even get me started on the day someone left a "gift" for us on the floor in the men's restroom. Gross.)
Our floor covering is carpet tiles, which shouldn't be a problem except the chairs that were purchased for the computers are very heavy, solid oak chairs that dig in between the tiles and pull them up ALL THE TIME. Why didn't they purchase chairs that would slide easily over the carpet tiles? It drives us nuts and of course is a tripping hazard. City repair people re-glue the tiles but of course they get pulled up again, over and over and over. I report at least three loose carpet tiles every month.
We discovered a few weeks ago that the brick facing on the outside of the building was coming loose. The builders failed to properly secure the bricks so now a whole section is sagging away from the structure. It looks pretty bad. They are supposed to repair it but who knows when they will get around to it.
Let's see...what else? We had raw sewage back up into our public restrooms the other day due to some work that was being done on our outside sewer drain. That was fun.
You would think in a building this new we wouldn't have all these issues. That's what you get when you go with the lowest bidder. Sigh...
Friday, August 29, 2008
I fix A/C?
Our A/C went off yesterday due to a brief power outage. I duly reported it in the prescribed manner (an email to the facilities manager, his assistant, and my supervisor), thinking someone would be out yesterday afternoon to start it back up again. No dice.
Sent another email early this morning, this time marking it urgent. Nothing.
Finally, about an hour before we were due to open, I frantically called the facilities manager, who said he had not seen either of my emails. He promised to call the city buildings people to get someone out here, but he couldn't say when they would arrive. He had no explanation as to why nobody else who had also received my emails had done anything about the situation.
We tried to wait patiently for someone to get here to fix it. Right before we were supposed to open, there was still nobody here to work on the A/C. It was still stiflingly hot (84 degrees) in the building, so I made a desperate call to my boss, who finally agreed (after some pleading on my part) to let us delay opening for an hour.
There was a crowd of people at the door waiting to get in, so a staff member went out to put up signs and explain what was going on. She was stopped by a guy in an A/C repair uniform who handed her his card and, in halting English, said "I fix A/C?" Thinking this is the repair guy from the city, she brought him to me. Now I don't speak Spanish, but luckily we have a staff member who does, so she was brought in to interpret. Turns out he was just an enterprising soul trying to drum up some business! I can just imagine me letting him at our A/C unit and him charging us hundreds for fixing it. I'd have been fired, I think.
Finally the city people showed up just before we were supposed to open and FLIPPED A BREAKER to get the A/C restarted. I asked them to show me where this breaker was (I had already been up there and could not figure it out) but they refused, insisting that we are not authorized to TOUCH anything on the A/C units.
So this is almost guaranteed to happen again. I hate having to deal with building problems, and we have plenty of 'em, I can tell you. But I'll leave that for another post.
Sent another email early this morning, this time marking it urgent. Nothing.
Finally, about an hour before we were due to open, I frantically called the facilities manager, who said he had not seen either of my emails. He promised to call the city buildings people to get someone out here, but he couldn't say when they would arrive. He had no explanation as to why nobody else who had also received my emails had done anything about the situation.
We tried to wait patiently for someone to get here to fix it. Right before we were supposed to open, there was still nobody here to work on the A/C. It was still stiflingly hot (84 degrees) in the building, so I made a desperate call to my boss, who finally agreed (after some pleading on my part) to let us delay opening for an hour.
There was a crowd of people at the door waiting to get in, so a staff member went out to put up signs and explain what was going on. She was stopped by a guy in an A/C repair uniform who handed her his card and, in halting English, said "I fix A/C?" Thinking this is the repair guy from the city, she brought him to me. Now I don't speak Spanish, but luckily we have a staff member who does, so she was brought in to interpret. Turns out he was just an enterprising soul trying to drum up some business! I can just imagine me letting him at our A/C unit and him charging us hundreds for fixing it. I'd have been fired, I think.
Finally the city people showed up just before we were supposed to open and FLIPPED A BREAKER to get the A/C restarted. I asked them to show me where this breaker was (I had already been up there and could not figure it out) but they refused, insisting that we are not authorized to TOUCH anything on the A/C units.
So this is almost guaranteed to happen again. I hate having to deal with building problems, and we have plenty of 'em, I can tell you. But I'll leave that for another post.
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