Читать книгу Hades' Melody - JD Belcher - Страница 10

Fall 1999.

My first real job out of college was work through a company called Contract Employment Services (CES) as a Physical Plant Specialist 1 for Pitt’s Facilities Management Division, headed by the vice chancellor, a heavy-accented Argentinian woman named Anna Guzman.

After graduation, Nicole and I parted ways. She moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to teach at an elementary school while I stayed in Pittsburgh. It was while I was a state away from her visiting my father in Alabama when I got the call from CES. They said the university wanted to hire me for a contracted position. I thought it would be a sensible move since I had worked there for the past two years as a student employee.

Facilities Management was responsible for everything pertaining to building maintenance at Pitt’s main and branch campuses. Headquartered in the historic Eureka Building on Forbes Avenue, the department had its own architects, engineers, and project managers responsible for new building projects, custodial services, finances, and recycling. I worked in the Technical Services Department.

Technical Services consisted of five draftsmen who updated not only the plumbing, electrical, mechanical, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning plans of existing buildings, but also new renovations on campus using a computer program called AutoCAD. I was the grunt man in the office, first offered the job as a student assistant, to help the draftsmen make blueprints of works in progress or of previous building plans on file in the archives.

After I started full-time after graduation, I was put in charge of managing a vast archival system which consisted of job files that contained all the information of a campus building when first constructed, from the foundation to the roof, down to the detail of what types of bricks were used, their color, and their manufactur-ers. There were even some drawings that had tiny little sketches of the crappers in the bathrooms. Pictures of these projects were always kept on file. They also had numbered Building Record Drawings called BRDs, simplified plans of every floor of every building owned by Pitt since its early conception in the early nineteenth century and any additional renovations made to these buildings after final construction. Combined, the entire archive consisted of four rooms that encompassed half of the basement floor of the Eureka Building.

If I wasn’t hunting for job files, I was making blueprints of the BRDs, a task I spent most of my time doing while at Technical Services. For example, if there were twelve drawings in a particular numbered set and I had an order to make five sets of three, I would have to make 180 blueprints for one job. There were times when I was required to make multiple print jobs of this kind and would spend the entire day in the basement.

Another part of my work included delivering prints to various university departments on campus, something I was fond of doing because it gave me the chance to leave the office.

The manager of Technical Services was a petite, elderly white woman named Donna, who had the responsibility of managing the other members of the team—Rich, Justin, Steve, Darrack, Bob, Mike, and myself.

Donna would buy bagels and cream cheese for us to eat before morning meetings, and during the day, she allowed us to listen to Howard Stern on the radio. Every day, we were given rush requests from the engineers and architects via Donna on small blue sheets we called blue slips. One of the guys would take a request, which usually entailed a large drawing project on AutoCAD, a smaller revision or an amendment to an existing plan.

After the corrections were made, they were sent back to Donna for review and then finally sent to me to make blueprints and then often a delivery.

All the members of Technical Services were white, so I was the singular standout. My olive skin and dark hair separated me from the rest, especially during conversations when praise was given to Bob’s Irish herit-age, Rich’s Slavic background, or Steve’s home-cooked Italian dinners. I had never claimed relation to another country; the only accurate thing I truly knew about my family was that I was a pure, native American mutt.

Nevertheless, we were a tight knit group, set apart from the rest of Facilities Management. I thought we all got along well. One of my favorite things to do while at work, of course, was to take smoke breaks. There were usually three: 10:00 a.m., noon, and once in the afternoon before the 4:30 p.m. leaving time. I’d ride the elevator down from our third-floor office to the first floor, go out the front doors to the parking lot on the side of the building, and face Forbes Avenue. Sometimes, Rich or Justin would meet me there, and we’d talk office politics, observe which employee drove what car, or watch the college girls pass by on warm days. Smoke breaks offered a change from the hustle and bustle of meeting deadlines and was an accepted behavior at the office.

Not many people smoked at the Eureka Building, and no one seemed to care about us as long as we were outside.

All of us in Technical Services had desks and computers, and when we didn’t have work to do—or even sometimes when we did—we wasted time by surfing the Internet. We subtly competed for the coolest screen-savers and offered each other suggestions on the most interesting websites to visit. Some kept in touch with friends and family by email or chatting. I spent a lot of my downtime sending and receiving messages, reading the news, particularly about the recent turmoil in the Middle East, taking quick peeks at Internet porn and fantasizing about the possibility of a Y2K meltdown.

Every now and then, the chancellor would call for a special order. She’d make a personal appearance to the office, and the place would immediately fall silent.

We’d quickly drop everything we were doing to accomplish whatever task she needed done. She was the queen of the department, the “big joker” in the Facilities Management deck of cards. Her orders trumped all other requests. Once, I had to stop a project I was working on just to warm up her car.

The guys often complained about the on-the-job hu-miliation and degradation we sometimes faced, bitched about their salaries, and whispered about the difficulties of working for a woman. Even Donna, who, by nature, offered much-appreciated motherly qualities, would oftentimes put on the attire of her authority and play the role of an evil stepmother. She checked and double-checked our work with Gestapo-like precision.

Whenever she called off, the day took on more of a noticeably relaxed atmosphere.

After Donna’s husband died, I watched the office slowly fall apart. She had used vacation time to take more than two weeks off before finally announcing her resignation. The aroma of change filled the air, and in the buzz of anticipation, we all discussed what might happen to Technical Services once she was gone. Some said Mike, the assistant manager and computer whiz, would take Donna’s place. Others disagreed, citing his lack of professionalism. It was even rumored that one of the engineers or architects could possibly take over her responsibilities as manager. When the upper echelons of Facilities Management announced an outsider to the position, for reasons I didn’t understand, one by one, the team slowly began to disappear. Bob was the first to leave. Then Justin moved out West. Darrack took another job. Steve was next to go. Before long, the only people left were Rich, Mike, and I. With no manager, all the requests came to Mike, and when Mike wasn’t around, they came to me.

Because of the heavy workload and lack of person-nel, it wasn’t long before Mike was authorized to hire a couple of draftsmen prior to the new manager’s arrival.

Two new additions were quickly signed on, and once they became amalgamated to the office system, Rich finally pursued other employment. Mike and I were the only remnant of the glory years of that team. Then, it was my time to go.