Entropy

I work at night in a new skyscraper in New York City.

This building is supposed to be state of the art green technology. Filters for rainwater for the toilets, waterless urinals, thermal windows, specially timed heating and cooling systems and elevators that batch floors ahead of time to use less energy.

Thus far the building is yet to be finished. Glass has fallen out of the building three times, nearly killing passersby below.

The water filtration system does not ventilate properly and half my floor smells like a sewer 90% of the time.

The waterless urinals tend to back up. On a high floor...they back up. What?

It's either too cold or too hot. Most of the time you'll see one or two people in my office with wool hats on.

And last night, or rather this morning, the fire department had to test the elevators. For whatever reason this required ALL of the elevators to be shut down at once for an unknown period of time with an occasionally operational car at any given random moment.

Now...set aside that there was no advance notice of this taking place, we just got a building announcement at the moment of the shutdown without so much as 10 minutes to prepare. Set aside that if there is an emergency in the building, EMT would not be able to get to wherever with a stretcher. But there is a co worker here, a woman in her 60s with bad knees. Going down 29 flights of steps at 1am when her shift ends is a ridiculous situation.

There was no cooperation at all regarding my co worker. None. Just sit around and wait and see which elevator car decides to work fully during the testing.

One MIGHT think that the FIRE DEPARTMENT might be sympathetic to the idea of people safety.

Nope.

My other friend and I went down the 29 flights of stairs. I knew that with my artificial hip that I'd feel it in the morning, but it wouldn't be a big deal and I could use the exercise anyway (you actually use more muscle going down stairs than going up) but my older co worker had to just wait. And Wait. And Wait.

This kind of thing just eats my ass. When the Fire Department isn't thinking ahead, no one is.

No wonder we are in the state we are in.