Stop Complaining

I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally I’ve had to cope with some relatively unpleasant working conditions in my time. I’ve worked in a retail store front in Inglewood, California that had originally been a four-room cottage – it would have been okay except for all of the random shootings in the neighborhood. I’ve worked in an office block in South Central Los Angeles – which would have been a lot better without the people actually shooting at us, but at least we had armored buildings and bullet-proof glass. I did worry when the passing gang bangers would take potshots at the six 1.2 million gallon gasoline tanks across the street, but those were armored well enough to defeat most small arms (and some anti-armor weapons, too)…

I’ve worked in offices that lost their air conditioning in the summer; I’ve worked in a windowless office so dark I was considering getting some toy bats to hang from the ceiling; I’ve worked retail in South Central, where you don’t have a nice armored bunker to hide inside (which is why I found the Unocal gig so easy to take); I’ve worked in converted military barracks in the process of being eaten by termites, and I’ve worked in food service under conditions best left undescribed. But even I can’t top the people in this next story…

A story being reported this week on UPI online tells the unusual story of a guy whose office is actually a converted elevator shaft, abandoned when his employer ran out of funds to install additional elevators and later converted to storage space and then to office space. He says the complete lack of ventilation is a drag, since he has to keep his door open at all times or suffocate, but it’s still a step up on the guy whose office is a converted restroom, complete with two urinals on one wall. They both envy the guy who got the office converted from an old bomb shelter, but at least they aren’t stuck in a cubicle farm. What makes this story so unusual is that all of these people are, in fact, Federal employees, and the building they work in is the U.S. Capital…

Which means, I suppose, that the accommodations may not be first class, but you can’t beat the location, especially if you work in Congress, which all of them do. Still, the next time you’re feeling bad about your windowless cubbyhole or fabric-covered box, cheer up. At least you’re not getting The Shaft…