When I started back at this firm, nearly 3 years ago, we occupied 2 floors (levels 3 and 4) of our 5-story building. The economy bit us and we had a few layoffs. Several other employees left and their positions were not filled. A year and a half ago, we condensed our space and renewed our lease for only one floor (everyone moved to the 3rd floor.) The 4th floor space sat vacant for over a year.
Now, someone is getting ready to rent the 4th floor space. They have contractors in there, up fitting the space, setting off fire alarms, creating unbelievable amounts of dust, drilling into the concrete structure sounding like an extra long day at the dentist…
The elevators for the building can be controlled by an electronic key fob. Our office is automatically locked from elevator access between 6 pm to 8 am. The 4th floor space now requires key fob access 24 hours a day. Why? I'm not sure. Especially when they have workers in there all day long… unless it’s to keep the dust from traveling to the other floors via the elevators. I think the workers are *supposed* to walk the stairwells, three flights of stairs to the 4th floor work site, with all their ladders, tools and equipment.
Some of the workers discovered they can ride the elevator to our floor between 8a-6p, and then walk the stairwell one flight to get to their work site. We have dusty footprints across our floors and carpet showing the tell-tale signs of their shortcut. When it first started, some guy with a ladder asked my co-worker, “where are the stairs?” and my co-worker pointed the direction. Now they know and most of them just depart the elevator, tuck their heads down and make a quick beeline for the stairwells. I typically don't realize what just happened until I hear the stairwell door latch behind them. We've contacted the building manager and he’s not happy to hear about this from us. He’s on our side. We have a private office and construction workers should not be using our space to use for their shortcut. My boss keeps telling us to let him know when we spot any coming through and he'll go tell them not to, but typically, they buzz through too quickly.
Earlier this week, after a lunch and learn, as I was passing the elevators, the doors opened up. Three guys, dusty and wearing safety vests and hard hats, had that “deer in the headlights” look as I peered at them.
“Are you trying to get upstairs?” I asked.
“How to get ups?” one asked me in broken English.
“You need a key. You can’t come through here. This is a Private office.” I responded. They punched a button and I stood watch as the elevator doors closed.
This morning, we had a bold one. As the elevator doors opened, his voice boomed as he spoke on his cell phone, “yeah! If you just take the elevator to the third floor, that'll be easier than carrying those ladders up all those stairs.” He wasn't quick about it either. I popped up out of my chair, ready to go stop him. My boss was quicker than me.
“You can't come through here. This is not a public space for you to walk through. You need to go back downstairs” my boss commanded.
The guy turned around and headed back for the elevator. As he got back on the elevator to go down, we could hear him reconnect on his cell phone with the person he was just speaking, “Huh. Well, I just got told I couldn't go to the third floor on the elevator… Yeah…”
SMH... guess his momma didn't teach him about tresspassing.
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