Thursday, January 25, 2007

Three feet away

This must be what it's like to be a tooth during a root canal.

As I write, two construction workers are outside — scarcely three feet away — repairing the damage caused a few months ago when a youthful driver mistook the gas for the brake, and plowed the family van into the side of the building just opposite my workstation.


When you work in a steel building, and you have damage, who do you call? A contractor? Or an auto-body shop?

They're drilling into the concrete, I think. I can feel the whine and rumble very clearly through the floor, and I can hear — well, that's about all I can hear, actually.

The humor in all this is that one of the workers poked his head in the side door about half an hour ago, to let us know that they were here, and they'd be working on the wall, but there shouldn't be any bother to us inside.

Makes me wonder what they would consider "bother to us inside" — the wall coming down on top of me, maybe?

2 comments:

Jonadab said...

Makes me wonder what they would consider "bother to us inside" — the wall coming down on top of me, maybe?
Yeah, contractors can be pretty impervious to minor bother such as noise, significant changes in the power factor on certain circuits, the occasional breaker flipping, or excessive ventilation due to circumstances such as doors and windows hanging open when they shouldn't. (I should know; the library has for the last several years had contractors at work on some aspect of the building approximately twelve out of every ten weeks.) However, there are things they do realize will bother you -- not that it keeps them from proceding on whatever schedule is convenient for them, but at least they warn you. Things in this category that I'm aware of include a need to shut off the power altogether, an inability to use the main entrance for more than a few minutes at a time, an inability to use the main stairway for more than a few minutes at a time, or a need to vacate certain areas of the building.

Andy said...

(I should know; the library has for the last several years had contractors at work on some aspect of the building approximately twelve out of every ten weeks.)

Did you know, that three out of two people are bad at fractions?