Life of a Lab Rat

Now that three noticeboard have been installed near the lifts on every floor in our building, we will be populating them soon with informative materials.

Such as, presumably, Don't use the lifts unless you're happy to be stuck in them for a while.

Anyway,

1. The notice board with perspex cover on the right will have OH&S info together with Emergency procedures and contacts

2. The notice board in the middle with perspex cover will have a floor plan
with room numbers and a directory of those whi occupy these rooms

3. The notice board on the left without the perspex cover will carry
temporary notices for general use that will be removed on a regular basis.

These will be the perspex covers of which two (at least) were screwed on so tight that this morning, before any notices went in them, they were already broken.

I like the implication that the notices that are actually useful or interesting will be removed on a regular basis, and are not protected by (broken) perspex. Given the state of our lifts and air-conditioning, we're not really surprised.

Greetings Everybody:

FYI, both lifts are out of order and stuck on level two.

Cheers

It's obviously a plot. My colleagues are all too fat and someone has finally decided to do something about it. I'll take photos of everyone wheezing up to my ivory tower.

I have arranged to meet a colleague for coffee and cell biology tomorrow morning. She works in Zoology.
She says the "zoology (biology) building, A08, is in Science Road".

So I go along to the University's map page, and click on 'Z' for Zoology. Nothing found. OK then, 'B' for Biology. Something there, but not what I want. Search for the building code, and find that I actually want the Heydon-Laurence Building.

Well that was bloody obvious, wasn't it?

From our workshop:

On Monday the air conditioning for the building will be turned off from 8.00am for 2-3hrs. This is to allow the cleaning of the cooling towers.

In some sections of the building you might feel the temperature decrease during this time.
Please try not to get used to this.

From a circulatory email this morning:

Last night we had a significant weather event across Camperdown/Darlington campuses. As a result we suffered lightening[sic] strikes and some water damage across the campuses due to the torrential downpour.

[. . .]

We believe that we got to most damage but anticipate that today will bring some additional issues that we will need to address.

If you have any issues please advise Campus Infrastructure Services [. . .]

Translation:

Last night it pissed down. We got flooded and hit by lightning.
We tried to fix things but if your office/lab/classroom is wet, or something is buggered, please give us a call.

You know, if I was the mischievous sort (be quiet, Paula), then I could have great fun in the next couple of days:

Hi all, Just as a reminder to look after the guys who are currently checking the safety of all our electrical equipment. As they are not scientists they don’t realise that they should be wearing gloves to handle certain equipment in places like an ethidium bromide room. So keep an eye out that they don’t handle any contaminated equipment (chemical, radioactive etc) without suitable precautions.

I am out for revenge after my screen and keyboard were covered in paint dust:
"Oooh, no, you can't go in there. That's where we breed the radioactive gorillas. And that's where we keep the failed cloning experiments. It's probably safe but I just need you to sign this indemnity form". . .

You will recall that we had a problem with doors in our refurbished offices.

Last week the contractors fitted new doors to the internal offices (the 'private' offices off the cube farm arrangement). And then (and only then) painted them. So on Friday it was almost impossible to work in the office due to the fumes. Over the weekend they sanded the doors and are in the process of (hopefully) putting the final coat on.

When it's a management failure.

They've spent the last two weeks replacing the doors to our refurbished offices. I must admit that they look like any other doors to me, and the new one nearest my desk creaks as much as the old one. But it still opens and closes, like doors are supposed to. Apparently the original new doors were too light, or too small, or the wrong kind of wood, or something. So we have improved new doors, which I guess is a good thing.

It turns out that the project was were badly managed and the firm responsible 'lacked local knowledge' (I don't know, I just eavesdrop in corridors) which is why we ended up with sub-standard doors — not that those of us who use them on a daily basis had actually noticed. Ultimately someone has had to pay for the reworking of the doors, whether it's the department (I sincerely hope not) or the firm that was so poorly managed in the first place.