[ First and foremost, names and places have been changed to protect the innocent, namely me. 🙂 ]
Y’all know how much it rained here last night, right? I believe at JFK they got as much water in one night as they ever had. The rain is an important part of today’s story. 🙂
8:30 AM:
I’m getting out of the shower, although by 8:30, I should be sitting at my desk.
(It’s not that I’m lazy; it’s that I just don’t care. When I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.) – “Office Space”, 1999.
Anyway, back to our story.
8:32 AM:
Nancy, a coworker and future coworker in the new job, calls and states “uhh, Jeff..sorry to bother you and all, but you won’t believe what happened.” “What happened”, I asked. The building burnt to the ground? “No, we have a major flood and I want to know what I can turn off in the computer room.”
You should now see the size of the grin I have on my face.
“Well, Nancy, how much water is there? We talking damp, or standing water?”. Nancy replies, “there’s about 8 inches of standing water in the computer room.”
You should now see the size of the grin I have on my face.
“Nancy–be careful, if anything smells like it’s burning or smoking, do not go in there. If you can get in there, or you can get Jerry [Mgr] to get in there, shut off everything you can. Don’t worry if you can’t, everything in there is replaceable.”
I hang up my cell phone, and I thank God because my wish came true, sort of. I walked to the kitchen table, and said to my parents as they ate their breakfast and read the paper. “You know, I prayed for an Al Q’aeda strike. Never happened. I prayed for a fire in the middle of the night when no one got injured, didn’t happen. I will however, accept a flood.”
When I arrived at Vandelay Industries 40 minutes late, you were walking in water up to your ankles, and that was at its shallowest of parts. The only items that were not damaged by water would be anything above ground, which means only a portion of the building. Sam hadn’t arrived yet, nor did Karol. Frank was also MIA. Nancy and Jerry had paged Frank – apparently Frank was due to make a visit to MSK (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) in NYC, as they are a huge client for us. Not today. In he comes – in sandals – and survey’s what’s going on. I had to walk away from him, because he started making some scary decisions. One of these scary decisions was to get the warehouse kids together, get a bunch of brooms, and shovels, and begin to sweep the 10 inches of standing water in the warehouse out the warehouse doors. Imagine a high school gymnasium being our warehouse, and imagine it with 10″ of standing water on it. Not going to happen.
Nancy gets on the phone with people she knows, and within about 30 minutes, 2 companies are here with pumps to pump the water out. While this is going on, in walks David Bowie. Upon doing a triple take, still convinced it’s David Bowie, I find out it’s our landlord, who either hurriedly got dressed to look professional at 10AM, or who was just coming in from the night before full of coke and smelling of sex. I couldn’t quite tell from which direction he was headed to or coming from, as he too, began to push water with a broom, while attempting to figure out a small, but workable water-vacuum.
Getting the sense that I was in the twilight zone, I began to survey the damage to the desktop computers, which unlike their definition, reside, like most companies, on the floor. I walked over to my machine first, naturally. Some standing water, but mostly puddles near my area, but very wet none the less. Gingerly, hoping not to get electrocuted, I began to unhook every wire from the back of the PC. I grabbed the PC, pulled it out from under the desk, and tipped it over to see if it had gotten damaged, or whether it had successfully weathered the storm.
Out poured about half a gallon of water.
I checked my team’s computers and voice jacks. Out of 4 voice and 4 data jacks, 3 voice and 3 data jacks were busted in addition to the 3 PCs that belong to those 3 data jacks.
I walk into the warehouse to explain to Frank that no matter how fast he can get the water out of here, will still have a huge computer problem. He then hands me a snow shovel, and asks me to start pushing some of the water out.
I calmly put the shovel down, and begin walk out of the building. On my way out, I see Jen, reprogramming a Baxter handheld pump for a patient. Upon waiting for her to finish the calibration, I notice the floor as slightly brownish. I look to my left, and there is scary Bob. A Vietnam Vet, roughly in his 50’s. Very nice guy, but a little weird. He says “you know why the water is brown?” Sheepishly, I say “No, why…”. “Shit. Fucking shit, that’s why.” Laughing a little, because this guy never gets angry, I say “How do you figure?”. He leans back a bit and says “Well, where do you think this came from? Sure, we had a lot of rain, but you’re talking about an entire building with 6″ to 10″ of standing water in it. A sewer overflowed, and seeped in, and that’s the reason it’s brown. Plus, you have to remember, with the exception of right over there (pointing toward the reception desk) and upstairs, the rest of us are either slightly or very below ground level. I told these guys 7 months ago when we had a minor flood in the back, that it will happen again, and they better do something. But, they didn’t want to listen to me, so this is what the get. Fuck them.” I look down right now, and I’m standing up to my lower ankles, in what I have learned, very recently I might add, to be shitpiss water. It is now when I bid Bob adieu, and proceed to the next part in the timeline chain of events.
10AM:
I’m on my way back home. I watched a little TV, finished some emails, called a few clients, and took a crap. Threw on a t-shirt and some shorts, I make it back to work by 11:30 where it looks like roughly the same amount of water we started with is still here. Apparently, the guys pumped a whole room and then the water returned, via the floor. Not good.
12:30PM:
Me and Billie go for Chinese food, talking about how fucked up Vandelay Industries is. Back by 2pm.
2:15PM:
Dave and Buster both arrive, shake my hand, and we all start laughing. These guys can’t believe it, but they never can believe it, because after all, it’s Vandelay Industries, and one should know, that anything, no matter how fucked up it is, will occur here. We started taking each computer, diagnosing it, and making a “toasted” pile (i.e. busted) and a “works” pile, meaning you fucking lucked out, as your computer didn’t get hit with water.
3PM:
Carpets, some of which are new, are now all pulled up with the help of the warehouse guys, myself, and some others. What’s left is a bare, yellowish-white concrete floor. As it turns out, Nancy spoke with the San Diego branch and they had a flood a few weeks ago. Simply drying the carpet and putting down disinfectant won’t really work, as within a few weeks, mold grows, everyone gets sick.
4:30PM:
Of the 36 desktop PCs that happened to be in the way of the water, 28 of them got fried. And, then, the unthinkable happened. Corporate called CDW.com (our computer distributor and many other company’s computer distributor) and are FedEx’ing 28 new PCs to arrive on Thursday by 10:30. I’m still floored by this, as it normally takes Vandelay Industries 2-4 weeks to manage to get someone a computer. By this time, the wiring company is here, replacing all of the data and voice jacks, while the vacuums suck away like there is no tomorrow.
5:25PM:
Sam overhead pages me from his office. Twice, the second time sounding more aggressive. “Hey what’s the problem, you ok?” I ask. “Yeah I’ve been calling you.” I literally take the phone off my head and away from my ear, and look at it for 2 seconds. “Yeah, we had a flood here today. My computer is fucked, and my voice jack is busted. I have no phone. I have no means, but how I can help you?” (Thinking I probably shouldn’t have said all that, but who cares.) And here comes the best part. “Uhh, Jeff, well I was wondering tomorrow if you had time, ya know, well if you could help with the computers, we might need your help tomorrow with some setup, logistically, if you don’t mind, if u …” “Yeah, whatever I’ll take care of it”, cutting him off mid sentence. “Thanks Jeff, I appreciate it.”
Some things never change.
5:30PM:
Home doing laundry.