form vs function

I've mentioned it before, but the building I work in is a Genuine Design Award Winning building - all full of significance and importance and stuff like that. Unfortunately it's also a crap building where nothing works.

Last year this meant endless entertainment as offices were flooded, whole advanced civilizations of mold were grown and we were all told that nothing could really be done to fix the problem because the building was Spayshul.

This summer we are enjoying the Delightful Summer of Climate Control. For several weeks the entire building was absolutely frigid - I'm not saying you could have kept milk fresh in my office, but it was pretty darn close. I didn't mind so much since it was also ridiculously hot outside so working in arctic conditions was rather refreshing; my co-workers felt blue lips and fingers were a little much though so they called to complain. Turns out that the heater on the air-conditioner was broken (I know! Who knew air conditioners need heaters?) so we were getting pure, unadulterated frigid air without anything to take the edge off it. They were pretty sure they could get it fixed... in six weeks or so.

Now we have an entirely different problem - the heater is beautifully fixed, but while they were foodling around with it they realized that the whole system seems to have been made entirely out of asbestos. No problem though, they'll just shut down the heater again while they figure out what to do - should only take another several weeks. Apparently some folks here got a little cranky about being asked to work in offices you can see your breath in so the maintenance guys seem to have come up with some sort of solution. Unfortunately whatever that solution is means that by noon my office is a toasty 78 degrees.

But hey - the design is GREAT.