(no subject)

[girlofprey]

I have a cold again, and I'm pretty sure it's because of my job. It's so cold in the reception where I work, at this time of year. We're basically sat between a revolving door that's never fully shut, and a set of lifts that for some reason blow out cold air at us. The lifts have been set so the doors stay closed at the bottom, so they don't blow out so much cold air at us, and that's about the only fix that can possibly have. We had a big, massive industrial heater for behind the desk, which had a tendency to melt things if you got too close to it, and gives you kind of a headache with the glowing orange light it puts out while it's on. But both of the elements blew last week so it had to be taken away to be fixed - no real ETA on when it will be. We had another heater under the desk, and one on the back wall that makes so much white noise I can't really hear anything when it's on, and they brought us out another heater for under the desk. But on Monday it was unexpectedly, particularly cold, and I didn't have the hang of the heaters under the desk so they kept turning themselves off, and I was literally huddling into myself for warmth, and before the end of the day I could feel that soreness at the roof of my mouth again that means a snotty nose is coming, and now I've got a cough that's been keeping me up at night.

Put that together with a bunch of people in the building that have colds, and they keep handing me things, sometimes with hands that are STILL holding snotty tissues, and it's not a great combination.

On Tuesday, my manager walked by and said if I got too cold, I should just come into the office, not to just suffer through it. But he wasn't there on Monday, so I didn't know that, my job as far as I'm concerned is to always man the desk, especially during the busy hours. Last night, when I came back from my break at about quarter to five, I found out a woman in the office had organised interviews up to 7pm, even though we close reception now at 6pm, and hadn't told us. I have to leave at quarter to seven to get a train home, so I called my manager just to say I'd have to trust an employee to lock up tonight, and he said if people were expected in I should really stay on reception until I had to leave. So then I had to sit on reception during the coldest, darkest part of my shift, when normally I get to go into the office these days. But no. I had the hang of the heaters better, so it wasn't so bad, but seriously?

And I'm just angry now. I mean, partly it is my fault because I'm always like, 'it's fine, it's fine'. And it IS fine. When we have the big heater. But this is not the first time elements in the big heater have blown, and we knew this was a problem from at least last year. My manager had some people in yesterday, looking at insulating the revolving door better, and last week the Head of Facilities woman was talking about ordering some branded fleeces for us - I said no for myself, because we had the big heater. But - maybe more preparation? Since we knew this was a problem since last year, and the heater could always blow? Why do we have to wait until we're sitting shivering in the cold for my manager to think about insulating the doors better? Why did he not tell me I could always go into the office when it got cold at the start of the cold season, rather than after it'd already been cold for a while?

So I'm fucking angry now. I'm not super looking forward to going and sitting in the cold, with a cold. I'm going to say something, but I don't know what I can say, because he obviously is already doing things to try to improve the situation. They predicted snow last night, and it hasn't come, and I'm annoyed because I was kind of hoping for a reason to not have to go in today. I have a cold and it's unpleasant. I hate my workplace currently.

Comments

[breyzyyin]

Ah, I am sorry to hear about your cold and the situation with the heating (and lack of heat) at work. The library that I work at has been having AC/Heating problems for several days now and there have been whole days where there was no heat at all in the building and all of the employees had to wear their coats inside (this past Sunday, the temperatures had dropped to single digits outside and so they finally decided to just close the library entirely given that for safety concerns). I've been rather sick the past few days myself, and I can't help but wonder if that wasn't a factor in how that came about. It's frustrating because they've been trying to fix the heat for quite some time now and haven't figured out the problem yet, but there isn't much we can say since they are trying to correct the situation. I really hope that you will feel better soon, and that they can do more things to help with the heat in general! *crosses fingers*