The company where I work at, is on the 7th floor of a massive building that has 8 floors (and a penthouse) and also houses other companies on each floor. The lift to get to my office is functional most of the time, but there are days where the devil gets behind the control and shuts it off. Luckily those days are far apart, say once in 3months or so.

Though frequently, we have to use the stairs to/fro the 6th floor where the lift takes off to/fro the ground floor. This is because sometimes the building manager decides to enforce a forceful exercise on the tenants above the 6th floor.

You know when you complain about an issue a 100 times and you don’t see any work being done to help the issue, you just know some people don’t care whether some things are broken or not.

Especially when they have reasons (excuses) to back themselves – “The lift doesn’t always get to your floor from the front wing because the back wing flew away and the sun does not glow at the ocean since the last planet vanished“.

Paraphrased, but not so much. The grammar comes off gibberish from these people, it’s hard to connect their sentences and what they ought to mean. They just like the knowledge of people taking stairs. Why else would it always work when THEY need to go to the 7th or 8th floor.

Now these building managers’ decided to renovate the entire building. Some form of new wall exterior, restructured penthouse, interior walls get kissed with fancy inscriptions and across with artworks and flowers, installing new restrooms -co-joining male and female’s…

Apparently building renovations take loads of understanding

While all these were happening, no company (tenant) had to vacate the premises. The managers promised that their work would be carried out mostly overnight and weekends, and they would stay a lot out of our ways so as not to interrupt our work activities.

They need to pass this memo because the companies in the building pay millions as rent, other millions for diesel, other millions for electricity – they did not need to be disturbed. My position at my company requires that invoices and receipts to/fro the company pass my desk for acknowledgement before they land on whosoever desk that it concerns.

Only reasonable thing in their entire renovation. Told them already I would steal this and run far

Now the promises those managers made were water inside basket. While at work, you might hear a tap at the window and when you look back, there you’ll see some rope access technician signalling to be let in through the window, all the while suspended by their harness.

At that time, they probably want to attach a hook for something that could connect the new exterior wall. They’re never with the fall arresters, or safety helmets, or one of those gadgets that would give someone peace of mind when looking above at the workmen from the ground.

Make the mistake of looking below after sliding the windows open for them to get in, you might faint out of shock at their lack of safety consideration. Such getting out of tenants ways while working.

How they are fixing the bathrooms, you just have to deal with it. Obviously they can’t work on the toilets while it’s in use because they have to change the entire installment- the water closet, the demarcating walls, the sinks – so they said. Meaning we can’t use the restroom at all, not even to look at the mirror.

And they need a lot of time to work in the restrooms, 5months. Don’t even ask why. We’re tired of calling. Let us see the eventual voice-activated flusher and remote-control toilet seats that should take this long to build.

And how do we manage? If you need to do the number 1 or 2, you need to find yourself on the 6th floor’s restroom, where the 5th and 7th floor occupants equally share, as their restrooms are being redeveloped simultaneously.

Of-course for a building such as this one where owners intend to build restrooms that have little TV screens at each stall (the truth -_-), you should know they’d need to feel secured that their properties wouldn’t get vandalized by haters. So yea, we have access cards for entry and exit into the building like most companies.

Real tiring because it wasn’t made as an ID card, more like an ATM card. So there’s this discomfort of having to hold it at all times to gain entrance or exit into the building. The security men couldn’t care less if they’ve seen your face 1000times as a tenant of the building even with your company’s ID card.

Forget your access card one time and they’ll stare at you like you’re a terrorist and they were safe staying away from you no matter how you keep trying to get them to help you in or out. You is a danger. They is ok where they at.

Now since this renovation started, they’ve had to shut off this access card for easy entry of the workmen i guess. It extended to all occupants of the building. No need going around with that THING.

But sadly (happily for them), the renovation’s been completed since December, and they had to reissue new access cards to us, which was tough for them apparently since all they did was complain about how we should have kept the old ones because those “things” are expensive. Like it should be our concern.

Well, they’re making it our concern now! Bravo to the building managers. As some of us had gotten our cards misplaced, they decided to make new cards for us attached with second class treatment.

They’ll keep us aside when it’s time to enter or exit, and they’ll act like “we’re working on the cards, but first put your names here, sign there, clean your thumb here, touch here, fingerprint here, use your index finger- so we make sure we…”

Really? You make sure everyday so you need same names everyday? That’s how they will delay for 10 – 20mins before they feel you’ve been punished enough to get released.

So today, my boss walks in flushed. He gives me this disgruntled look that makes me understand he’s been harassed at the security post. But there was more today.

He had to use the stairs because the managers chose to shut the damn thing off for “maintenance”, and since he was panting and sweating, he decided to take a turn to the restroom on the 6th floor to splash some cold water on his face.

But that didn’t happen because the building managers chose to let his people turn off the water too. All the building curses in one morning! ahaha