Boss put chocolate cake on aircon controller, to stop people using it

Re: Heating / Aircon

My missus insists we have it about 23C in our house all year round, which only happened after her thyroid went haywire just after a difficult pregnancy. I prefer to be cold than hot, so my missus will often wallow in the bath 2 or 3 times a day on weekends rather than force the rest of us to sweat it out with her.

Re: Heating / Aircon

I once worked in a lab where most of the area's Postdocs and PhD students had desks (with PCs on them) in an open plan area which had been created by glass roofing a square space inside the building but open to the sky.

It had large aircon units which were ancient and VERY LOUD when they were working. In the winter we froze and in the summer we roasted. However, at no point, which got measured, were the temperatures high enough or low enough to warrant action under H&S to be taken to remedy the situation.

From personal experience sitting still at 12C in inside clothes is uncomfortable. I used to wear a fleece. If I had continued to work there through another Scottish winter I would have bought fingerless gloves.

Most folk in Scotland cease to use their conservatories in the winter. We had to work in one. Because we were deep in a well of buildings we almost never got sun except in high summer. Needless to say we didn't have cellular connections. You had to go to the very end of the corridor for that.

Re: Heating / Aircon

I've also never worked anywhere yet where anyone who could didn't fiddle with the thermostat constantly as the temperature was uncomfortable somewhere in the office.

Surely this shit should be sorted out by now.

Best "solution" I ever heard of was the company that installed dummy thermostats around the area. (But didn't tell the workers that!)

People fiddled with them and commented on how much more comfortable the area was.

All due to the placebo effect and a sense of control over the environment.

Meanwhile, the real thermostat that controlled the heating/AC was never changed.

humidity Re: Heating / Aircon

At one place, half the people complained it was too hot, half that it was too cold. The AC people ran round&round with a thermometer.

They never checked humidity; but one person would ride her bike to work, put her sweaty sweatshirt on her chair to dry -- and after 9+ hours it would be still sweaty.

I suggested they replace their thermometer with an astrology book -- more fun, and equally misleading.

Re: The Juice Is Loose

"dumped the contents into the keyboard/desktop computer unit."

Wasn't that also the sort of time period when even thinking about eating or drinking within 10 feet of the computer or keyboard was a sackable offence?

That one would have been easy: an urgent maintenance that needs all the rack doors to be open. Dump the junk in the corridor and let the owners deal with it.

Of course, the maintenance will take several weeks.

No need for urgent maintenance. Just send out an email: "The junk from the comms room has been moved to the corridor. The owners WILL retrieve their Junk before date X. On date X any remaining objects will be dumped in a skip. We are NOT responsible for loss of items."

There is no need to NOT be a dick about it.

Obvious design fail

Designing it "roomy" was asking for trouble. If there is spare space in a non-client-visible part of a building, it WILL be used as storage space until the room is no longer usable. You're lucky that you didn't end up hosting the cleaning staff's wheelie cart as well. I for one have never seen any place where that did not happen, and I've seen quite a few places on several continents. It's just a basic law of the Universe. If you want a garbage-free environment, design it with enough space for operation, but barely (of course that doesn't apply to client-visible places such as lobbies, where hundreds square meters of empty, wasted space seem to be desirable).

You designed the computer room wrong.

The doors need to be 2" wider than any unit to be placed inside(usually the racks) and no more. The room needs to be long and narrow, and the racks facing towards one of the long walls, so that there's decent working area in front and behind, but no more. Workdesks and storage is to be at the end furthest away from the doors.

You need a raised floor, and a step up just inside the door. And a ramp that is cumbersome to assemble and put in place, and must be removed again to close the door.

That will make it a PITA to store large objects in there...

Mark off any corner or other floorspace with yellow and black tape, and write 'for recycling'...

Then track down and... 'no one ever heard from them ever again' anyone who has access without a good cause.

"Within 3 months of moving in, the room had changed from a roomy, pleasant work space, to being jammed full of crap..... to the point that it is no longer possible to open the rack doors unless you first empty the room into the corridor."

Which is what you do, and then make an anonymous call to the local fire service that a unannounced random inspection would be a good idea.

Or just tell the maintenance staff that all the crap in the hallway needs to go into a skip - NOW.

Re: Steak

When there's a southwest breeze, my office receives the scent of toast in the morning and chips at lunchtime. In the ten years I've been here I've put on two stone.

Re: Ah yes, the AirCon adjustments

4ft floor? Seems a bit low.

Re: cake, and grief counseling

This is the first time I've actually seen someone use that quote and not the overused one.

Re: cake, and grief counseling

in case you missed the connection, here's a nice bit of back story and bonus mid-story leading up to the endgame

"The bad news is that reality doesn't exist. The good news is we have a new cat graveyard."

Re: The first I have ever said this

"Cake is not the solution"

Of course it is. What's the problem?

Re: It's not just cake which can annoy the real folk.

"a small pair of wire cutters"

One former colleague who preferred piece and quiet in pubs was known to carry a pair of wire cutters in her handbag.

Re: It's not just cake which can annoy the real folk.

"The day after the speakers went live, they were suprisingly quiet - due to a small pair of wire cutters"

I can now reveal that, as a student and at the request of my boss, I replaced the 100V line speaker in the outer office with a suitable wire wound resistor, so that the people running the muzak system would not notice that the current had reduced.