My building flooded....

We got phone calls Saturday night that our work building flooded when a water pipe broke. A couple of inches of water throughout pretty much the whole building; the only departments that were spared were our GIS and our 911 areas. A few of the offices are completely ruined; when the pipe broke, it spewed water into filing cabinets and desk drawers. The water pretty much flowed from one end to the other along the floor. Most of my stuff is out in the hallway (which has been removed of all the tile). Our carpets are to be cleaned sometime Wed or Thurs. Just got the computers back up and running. I was lucky in that I don't keep a lot of stuff on my office floor; one of my co-workers has a ton of stuff on his floor, and all of it is pretty much ruined at this point.

Battery back-ups are ruined. I'm using a small surge protector that I had brought in from home to plug in my fridge. (Fridge is fine.)

I have to be admit that I was a bit frustrated that my computer is running because honestly, I could use an upgrade  . The computer that I have now freezes whenever I'm working on something intricate and it's annoying. I try to save a board in Adobe and, while the computer says the document is saved, it's not. I usually work in several programs at one time and I'm always running out of memory. I was rather hoping my computer was fried, but alas, that didn't happen. In fact, one of the computers in another office was dripping water when it was lifted up off the floor. A good drying and it started right up (and yet I wash one iPod--OK two iPods--and they bite the dust. How fair is that?).

So we are working (not terribly hard) in an environment that is, at best, a mess. ServPro is in and out; they put these huge fans at the office and cube door. It's so noisy in here we can't hear ourselves think, let alone take part in a conversation. I haven't answered my phone at all today because I can't hear the party who's trying to call. There's plastic all over the places and we already trashed several boxes of plans and documents and such because they're soaked. 

We asked about being able to stay home tomorrow. And were told that is not going to happen. Darn it.

Oh what a pain!  How can anyone work like that?  I get headaches and my tinnitus gets louder when I'm around noises like those large fans.  (It's worse if I try to sleep with that noise around.)  I'm not sure I could take it in there.  I'd probably ask to use a sick day or two.  I hope they get things cleaned up soon!!

We have these very glaring overhead lights that are beyond annoying; each setup has three florescent tube lights and each cube has two setups, so we're talking six of those lights. They'll give me a migraine every time we use them. In our department, we all agree they're a PITB, so we don't turn them on and we all have our own lighting in our cubes, a lot less bright, a lot less glaring; we're all comfortable that way. However, because people are working in the hallways and such, all overhead lights have to be turned on at all times until everything is cleaned and we're back to normal. I'm not doing well with the lighting right now at all and have been working on a headache....between the lights and the fans' sounds, it's ridiculous. We keep hoping to hear that tomorrow is a day off work, but so far, we are expected to report. 

:cross: that they give you time off until the worst of the damage is repaired. I hate those fluorescent lights...they never fail to give me a headache.

Maybe you can come down with 'flu' tomorrow...

I really think that none of you should have needed to report in today.  I'm glad your computer is working but I know you were hoping it died.  

I had emailed you this morning but don't know if you ever received it, maybe your computer at work was still down at the time.

Hope everything gets back to normal soon.

Oh no. Those are tough working conditions. I hope it dries out fast. :cross:

Day two....we have everything out of our cubes (except for desks and such) that we could take out. They're supposed to shampoo the carpets either Wednesday or Thursday. My carpet is "fairly" dry; there are few wet spots here and there. I'm pretty much sitting in my office on the computer; there's no where else to go. We were hoping for a day off work; that did not happen. But we're not getting much done at all. 

I don't even try to answer my phone when people call. I can't hear anything with all the fans running. I let them leave a message, then go outside and use my cell phone to call them back. 

It's interesting. I will say that.

"Interesting" is a nice way of putting it. I'd be tearing my hair out

jcat said:

"Interesting" is a nice way of putting it. I'd be tearing my hair out

Click to expand...

me too.

Something very similar happened to us at work but on a larger scale. We had a tropical storm come through and dump a ton of rain on us. Our parking lot is lower than the street so we got all the runoff. we also have a stream that runs behind the building and it overflowed so that just added to what we had. The building flooded. They ended up having to close down operations here for 2 weeks while everything got put back together. they set up a team to work remotely from another site but most of us were off on administrative leave. it didn't hurt my feelings a bit. Sorry to hear that you didn't get the same. They ended up having to add additional irrigation systems to the parking lot to get rid of the water when we get heavy rain which is ALL the time in the summer here in Florida. 

Well that suck's.

I am so tired of hearing these fans I could spit. It's beyond annoying. Maintenance had to turn the water off for a while this morning. We are managing here; it's just frustrating, trying to deal with all the noise and people and everything else. I had several plans to review yesterday, so I sat in the cafe/kitchen area where I thought it would be quieter. I think everybody had that idea, though, so not very quiet at all. I did my reviews, then came back into my cube to type everything up on my computer. 

I started listening to my iPod this morning. Music is better than fans any day. Aerosmith anybody?