Beyond the Drawbridge

Normally, I try to restrain myself from expressing petty complaints about the behaviour of my colleagues, knowing as I well know that my own actions are most certainly not beyond reproach.  However, I find myself very much in the mood for a rant, having discovered yesterday – at a somewhat inopportune moment – that someone has stolen the cart for the autoclave, a cart so specialized in its design, that it can really serve no other purpose than assisting me in the removal of 8 litres of superheated liquid from said machine.  The occasion forced me to ponder the profoundly philosophical query, “What the Fuck?”

And since I am in a mood to relieve myself of annoyances by the time tested method of griping, and knowing as I do of the Black Knight’s affection for imprecise communication, I thought I might give vent to a peeve peculiar to my department.  The Department of Pharmacology is split between two buildings.  In the Blackburn Building, it occupies portions of the 2^nd (which is inexplicably located below ground level) and 3^rd floors.  In the adjacent Bosch Building, it occupies the 2^nd floor (which is indeed the second level of the building).  I reside on the 2^nd floor of the Blackburn Building, which by the by has an additional four levels above me containing all manner of useful resources (excluding, at present, the autoclave). 

For reasons unknown and beyond my imagining, everyone in the Blackburn Building refers to the portions of the department located in the Bosch Building as “upstairs”, rather than “next door”.   Thus when someone asks, “Are you going upstairs to autoclave your media?” and I reply in the affirmative, there has not been any reliable exchange of information.  This phenomenon has resulted in countless confused conversations regarding the locations of various items and personnel.

Granted, the 2^nd  level of the Bosch Building is technically located on a higher physical plane than the 2^nd level of the Blackburn Building, but calling it “upstairs” seems like a shockingly ambiguous description of its location.  I cannot help but imagine that the 3^rd floor occupants of the Blackburn Building must feel marginalized in some small way by this tradition.  No one has been able to offer any consolation by way of an explanation, resorting instead to the frequently echoed excuse “that is just the way it has always been done” – a phrase so freely tossed about that it could fuel an entire rant of its own.

Fortunately, my hostile emotions are now dissipated, thus I shall retreat to my 2^nd floor dungeon to perform some outdated task while I wait for the autoclave to cool down.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 02:02 and is filed under annoyances, cow-orkers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.