World FM Day - Forum - Recent Threads

Things you see when working in FM

rlcarney — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:33:30 GMT

I know this is late but I wanted to share one of the humorous things that has happened to me in FM over the last 15 years. I am at a mid size university and one day while working in the main lobby of the science building I heard a sound like cleats on stone and when I turned around I thought I was going to be chewing out one of the athletes but instead I saw a young lady leading a goat on a leash across the lobby floor (yes a goat, not a little petting zoo type but a full grown large goat). Needless to say I was stunned and could do nothing but watch her cross the lobby and disappear into an elevator. When I could compose myself I went to find her to remind the young lady about our no animals in the building policy but she had disappeared.

A day later I was telling the tale to one of the faculty and he sheepishly admitted she was in his class. Before I could tell him it was a bad idea he stopped me and said she brought it in as a show and tell as they had been talking about the digestive systems in mammals. He also said he and the class were punished bad enough as the goat had a bad case of gas that day and they had to suffer through the smell. I figured he was right and let it go at that....

FM on Call - Day AND Night

DML — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:44:25 GMT

My husband also works in the FM field. Some years ago he received a call about malfunctioning A/C in one of his buildings as we were returning from a night out celebrating our anniversary.

Understanding spouse that I am, I agreed that we should stop by and check it out on the way home. The building was in one of those large office complexes that is mostly deserted by the time it gets dark. My husband always has a spare set of work clothes in the trunk for "just in case", and I suggested that he put them on to avoid ruining the good clothes he was wearing.

He agreed that it was a good idea, and I handed him the clothes from the trunk. Taking a quick look around and noting that we seemed to be the only people around for miles, he decided to change his pants in the parking lot so he would not have to carry the other ones around while he worked inside.

As luck would have it, the local police drove up on their regular patrol just as he had removed his good pants, but had not yet put on the old ones. Seeing a young female next to a half-dressed man, the police officer announced on the loud speaker, "Are you all right? Do you need any assistance?"

And my husband replied, "I'm OK. I know how to put my pants on by myself."

After we all had a good laugh, we showed the officers our ID and explained why we were there. I'm sure the officers still remember this story and laugh about it as we do.

Wacky World of FM

DML — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:31:24 GMT

Those of us working in the Facilities Department of a major university are often perceived as being less than intelligent by many of the faculty members.

One day we received a service call that the lights were not working in one of the research buildings. One of my colleagues was dispatched to the scene and he entered the offices one-by-one and tried the light switch as part of the trouble-shooting procedure. Each time he tried the switch, the lights would go on. With the lights all on, he tried to diagnose what had happened previously.

He was not able to find anything wrong electrically, but did ascertain that the department's administrator was on vacation on her honeymoon. It was her daily practice to turn on all the lights when she arrived first thing in the morning. The person filling in came in a bit later, and when the researchers entered the building and saw all the lights were off, they assumed they were broken.

The story has a happy ending in that everyone who works in that building thinks we are miracle workers. They sing our praises daily.

TRAPPED!

pmr49 — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:36:21 GMT

One of our buildings at a famous game company, populated with many gifted writers, editors and designers, had a two-floor elevator. I received a call that one of the more eccentric employees was stuck in the elevator. It was a relatively new building and the elevators were well-serviced, so folks getting stuck in the elevator was quite uncommon.

I walked over to a first floor cubicle near the elevator and called the elevator phone extension. John answered right away.

"How long have you been stuck, John?" I asked.

"About 30 minutes. Get me out of here!" was his response.

"Why didn't you call sooner?" I wondered.

"I called my cubicle but no one answered" he said. It was possible for fellow employees to pick up incoming calls in their work area, but no one wanted to get stuck in a 60-minute conversation about some arcane game rule with one of John's frequent callers. So no one had answered. He finally figured out to call the front desk and that's how I found out about his predicament.

I asked him "What floor are you on?".

"I,,, I,,, I'm not sure" he stammered. I asked him to knock on the door and I could tell that the elevator was in its home position on the first floor.

"John, are any of the buttons lit up"?

"No" was his short answer.

"Push the 'Open' button, John" I suggested. The door magically opened and without a word, or even looking at me, John walked by, his face buried in a game manual, He almost walked into the wall.

What happened is that John, starting on the second floor, pushed the elevator "Down" button. When the elevator opened, he walked in, but didn't push any buttons. The elevator returned to the first floor home position, and there it sat until I performed the heroic rescue,

It was my intent not to embarrass John by retelling the story, but when he posted a complaint about the malfunctioning elevator on our intranet, I really didn't have much choice, did I? Some days you have more fun than others.

All in a Day's work

Jonnie — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 15:27:07 GMT

Having managed commercial office buildings for the last 20+ years I am never surprised at the things we have to do. In the last three months our property in Maitland, Fl has become known as "Wild Kingdom". We have had to capture a duck who decided he liked to hang out between the side entrance to the building and the stairwell door. He was not happy when someone wanted to come out of the building and things got much worse when he developed a bad case of diarrhea. My building engineer had to "duck sit" while we waited on the folks to come to take him away. As he was duck sitting the bird decided it was time to fly away, and now we have my building engineer running and trying to keep the duck in his sights. Fortunately the duck landed in a retention pond one building over and he was captured there. Then we had a 4' alligator that took a liking to one of our retention ponds and would sun himself on the bank making folks who parked near him very nervous. We finally were able to trap him and he was taken away to live in a place better suited for his kind. Then we found a nasty hive of very aggressive bees much too close to our parking lot so the pest control folks donned a "bee suit" and took care of the hive. We also had Ollie the Otter who would travel in the drains and pop up in retention ponds. Generally they travel in pairs so we are thinking he got separated from his buddy. The big problem with him was he would like to sun himself on the sidwalk and would not let folks pass. Fortunately this only lasted a little over a week and he apparently found a better home. The best story is the black racer snake who appears at the front of one of the buildings and likes to run across the sidewalk terrorizing folks as they are walking up to the buiilding. We had a big showing last week and I am waiting inside the building for the broker and prospects to arrive. I see them coming and just as they get a few feet from the front doors of the building here comes the black racer slithering across the sidewalk. Fortunately the prospects were all men and they thought it was cool to see the snake. Not so sure had there been some females they would have felt the same. So my building engineer has a new name "Trapper John". Never a dull moment in this business.

Good Humor

Naomi Millán — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:26:13 GMT

Unexpectedly warm weather caused a snag in a chiller retrofit project. While engineering scrambled to find a workaround, I scrambled to order spot cooler and giant fans. In the lag between their arrival and the temps rising in the space, the FM team went around with a cart laden with ice cream novelties and icy drinks. Handing out fudge pops was never something I'd imagined falling under the "to do list."