I have HAD it with the construction.

The BBQ Pit
1

About three months ago, the tenant across the hall from my office moved out of their suite. Not long after, the tenant upstairs directly over us moved out as well.* The landlord is gutting and rebuilding both suites for new tenants.

Construction takes place from 8 AM to 5 PM Monday-Friday. No, this can not be altered. No, they can’t reserve the extremely loud work (like nailguns echoing like gunshots, jackhammers, extremely loud saws, things that make all our desks rattle) for the weekends/evenings. No, we may not ask them to keep quiet for even a few minutes for a meeting or phone call.

They leave hunks of drywall, dusty footprints, and bits of metal all over the lobby and elevator. The banging and drilling never stop. Neither does the shouting or the blasting radio (No, we may not ask them to turn it down). They block the elevators on their floor for long stretches while loading and unloading. You can get down via the emergency stairs, but you get dumped out in the back. You can’t go up (the doors on the first floor only open from the inside. Coming back from lunch I got stuck in the lobby for 15 minutes.

They park their god-damn trucks sideways across multiple handicap spots. I complained to the landlord once. Next time I called the cops. The landlord had the fucking nerve to send out a memo telling us to not call the police, but to let them know if you need the handicap spots and they will tell them to move their trucks. (I wish I still had my temporary tag from my surgery just so I could fax a copy to them with “Every day, jackass” scrawled across the bottom)

Right now, they’re working on the electrical system. That’s right, middle of the workday. They’re crawling in the walls and ceiling of our suite. Last week they accidentally disconnected our T1s, taking out our network and our phone system. Today, they’re fucking with the wires and the lights keep flickering. Power randomly goes, taking our computers with it. Ten minutes ago they did something causing a surge on the circuit that, annoyingly, runs in my office and the one next to me (blew my surge protector). We’ve powered down the servers as a precaution and I can hear my boss shouting in the outside hallway.

“We’re sorry for any inconvenience,” says the landlord.

It’s stuffy in here (despite being cold outside). I think the HVAC off.

There is a law firm on the 4th floor (this is a Class A building, btw, not a shitty low-rent storefront). Either they’re not being disturbed by this or the landlord’s got everyone by the balls.

<insert pause>

Post typed at 11:40. Now 12:30. Why the pause?

They tripped the motherfucking fire alarm.

(Thank all that is or might someday consider being holy that the sprinklers didn’t go off)

I give up. It can’t get any worse, can it? I mean, what more could they do? Shit in the toilets?

*Yeah. Now I’m thinking. . . what a shock.

2

I love these brewing conflicts. Can you keep providing updates?

Can you call the cops and tell them the landlord asked you not to call them? There’s gotta be something strange about that.

3

They’ve been building condos right next to our apartment. The fact that the view from our balcony is now the side of a building is a minor complaint next to having to listen to the damn thing go up. I’m so glad we’re finally moving.

4

Send a copy of that memo to the cops. They’ll love it.

5

Sprinklers don’t work like that; they aren’t triggered by some central alarm. There’s a cap at each sprinkler head held on by something that melts at a specific temperature. No heat, no sprinkler.

The rest of it sucks, but at least you’ll stay dry. Until their electrical work starts a fire.

6

Huh. Even in the Pit, I learn stuff every day here. :slight_smile:

7

They could shit on them.

8

Either that, or it gets broken by someone who doesn’t realize that it’s not a suitable bondage anchor…

9

Oh. And keep calling the police anyway. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon at a minimum.

10

Too easy. Do the stealth thing and shit in the tank. Reverse TyDBowl thing.

11

Not only that, but when one is triggered, they don’t suddenly all go off like in the movies. Only the ones that get hot enough to be activated.

12

Do we work together?? They’ve been “remodeling” upstairs at my job for months and months. Regular bangs so loud that I get that “holy shit there was just an explosion” adrenaline multiple times a day. I already have a crazy PTSD-type sensitivity to sudden loud noises. Drilling so loud that I can’t even take a phone call. Or think. Gah!

13

Obsidian:

This is why the Good Lord gave us machine guns. Don’t get mad, get even.

Our Heavenly Father also gave us Kettle One and Grey Goose for these very trying times. Put your faith in God… :wink:

14

I can think of a really crappy thing. One phase of the power going into the building dies. The fire alarm then switches on and off power at 60 htz. You can’t reset the alarms to stop them, because they are being triggered again and again. The power has to be fixed by the power company. That lasted a half an hour. A squirrel shorted the power companies step down transformer.

The gas company installed new gas lines along the road and started venting them. It was a windy day, and the gas was blowing past me and another worker. We got very high for a short time, and couldn’t think very well. We were outside, and had it occurred inside, we would have been screwed. That’s what happens when you breath in natural gas folks.

15

Y’all are making me laugh, despite the headache. (I spent most of last week at home because of this nonsense, but sometimes you need to be in the office, y’know?)

The man running the show over here at my company is a great guy, a great boss, but he’s kind of a. . . negotiator. Not really into making waves. Though there was some yelling, it didn’t do much. After the last power blink turned into a full time outage, my direct boss (who’s kind of the Big Boss’s right arm) walked out of her office past mine and growled “Okay, now it’s Bitch Time.”

They had an electrician and someone from property management in here inside 10 minutes, and the power has been steady since, servers up and everything. They are no longer in the walls/ceiling. I don’t know what she said, but I’ve got the urge to buy her flowers.

Maybe she threatened to send the disabled parking note to the cops.

16

I live in a rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood in Chicago, and two houses almost directly across the street from our apartment and the one next door to us are all in the middle of slash and burn gut rehab projects that have lasted about six months so far. So it’s basically like your office story, but it’s our HOME.

17

Hell, I’m building a damned garage and it’s all my fault. They start at 7 am. I usually set my alarm for 8. It’s shocking how that one hour of sleep has been affecting me - not to mention, I don’t care how well you WERE sleeping, when you’re woken up by somebody putting a roof on, all that sleep is for shit. Down the drain, every day.

18

Hmm, sprinkler… bondage… Northern VA location. Used to go do Disclave possibly? I missed that particular year, but I do enjoy telling the story at other cons. :stuck_out_tongue:

19

A few years ago a sinkhole was being repaired in the parking lot next to our home. In spite of an ordinance prohibiting them starting before 7:30 am, they kept starting at 6:30 a.m. It drove us all so nuts that our HOA complained to the shopping center management, who assured us that from that point on it wouldn’t happen any more. So the day they woke me up at 6:40, after having worked till 11 pm the night before and not being in the best mood I’ve ever been in as a result, I didn’t even stop to think. I threw on a robe and stormed out, all bedhead and no glasses and looking like hell, and proceeded to rip the supervisor a new one right in front of his entranced crew. It was highly satisfying. The noise also stopped. Sometimes raising hell really is the only answer.

At least they haven’t been driving piles. Some of my coworkers on the wrong side of the building got to listen to that all day long every day for six weeks as a new building was being constructed across the street. BAM…BAM…BAM…ad nauseum. For six weeks.

And they wonder why people go postal.

20

My boyfriend’s apartment complex is getting new roofs. (Why do I want to type that “rooves?”)

And they start before eight o’clock in the morning. When the hammering slows down, the conversation speeds up. Really loud conversation. Are they all deaf?

And the lawn maintenance? Why the FUCK do they do it so fucking early in the morning? And even on weekends? I swear the grass is cut and the edges trimmed like three times a week. It’s insane. You’d think my BF lives on a fairway.

Remind me why I’m moving in with him there?

:smack: