The Little Dig

By now, I'm sure most of you have heard of the tragedy in the Big Dig project in Boston. Well, this week, I had my own minni Big Dig experience right in my own cubicle. There was a time when I promised I would never write about work, but this one just had to be told.

Tuesday, it was hot here. Apparently, So hot and humid, that the air conditioning unit overheated and the compressor froze. The fan unit still pumped and proceeded to pump hot air over our cubicles direct from the building roof. Normally, this building is so cold that we wear coats all summer. In the winter, I have often gone into the bathroom to wash my hands in warm water to get back the feeling so I can keep typing. The temperature climbed steadily over the afternoon. In exasperation, I sat back in my chair leaned my head back and wiped off the sweat only to see a big brown stain on the ceiling tile above my cube. These are those two-inch thick compressed paper acoustical ceiling tiles used in most big box office buildings.

Funny, I don't remember a stain above my head. Nor the little stain in the cubicle next to mine. I watched it through the afternoon and it did seem to creep further outward through the day, but noting remarkable. So I called the office manager and she called the building super and nothing happened. They were too worried about getting the AC working again. I can understand. They have a whole workforce dressed for Siberia here working in the serengetti.

The next morning I returned to my cube, relieved to see that the stain in my cube had not grown overnight. But the little stain in the cube next door was almost the size of the 2 foot by 4 foot tile and a crack was beginning to form over the length of the tile.

Now flash back to my childhood, if you will. The phrase my father always used when we tried to defy gravity was, "a good course in physics would have told you that wouldn't work." You know, place a stack of books too close to the edge of a table... "A good course in physics..." Placing way too much trash in too small a bag and then trying to tie it up. The bag breaks and dad says, "A good course in physics..."

I really looked forward to taking physics so I could figure out how it all worked. And now, looking at the crack in the ceiling tile, I'm calculating in my head, the force of gravity on that tile acting straight down added to the weight of water spread over the surface area of the tile compared to the tensile strength of that compressed paper acoustical tile that has now been degraded by the fact that it has absorbed about 3 gallons of water. And I'm thinking, "A good course in physics would tell you, she's gonna blow."

So I called the office manager who called the building manager. An hour later (the crack is getting bigger), the maintenance guy Jose, shows up and looks at the problem.

At this point, let me note, that the ceiling tile in question is not entirely in Ns cubicle. When the stain started, it was 99% over Ns cubicle. When I came in this morning, It had grown to 50% my cubicle and 50% Ns cubicle. Which means that when she blows, she will come straight down, hit the cubicle wall which will exert a force equal and opposite of the force of gravity on the water filled tile and further break into many tiny wet little pieces forming a trajectory in both directions away from the cubicle wall.

If I calculate correctly, estimating the amount of water in the tile and the distance between the ceiling and the top of the cubicle wall, I can estimate that the wet shards will travel to within inches of my shoulder. So I scurry around moving N's papers to the other side of his cube (he's in India) and moving my belongings to the other side of my cube. A co-worker moves Ns workstation out of the line of fire.

Within minutes, Jose pronounces that those tiles can take a lot of water. "EEts fine. He says. I'll go get another tile. The water has stopped leaking." Then he explains why on a hot sunny day, we have suddenly developed a leak in the ceiling. It seems that when the AC turned off yesterday, they ran some garden hoses up to the roof to cool it off. Why do garden hoses full of water cause leaks when the spring rains we have suffered here in Boston, cause no problem at all? Well, it seems that in running around the roof to hose off the compressor, the workers might have poked a couple of holes in the roof. Why anyone would build a building with a flat roof in NE is beyond me anyway. But that's another post.

Jose leaves my cube to "go get another tile." Within 5 minutes (note that I have already settled back down to work and I'm wrapping my mind around routing and translation of voice traffic over the Internet) when CRASH. Said tile does what anyone who has taken a good course in physics would guess. It comes down, full of water, hits the cubicle wall, breaks into further shards and changes trajectory towards the middle of my cube and the middle of Ns cube. At the same time that parts of the tile hit the top edge of the cubicle wall, other parts hit the now empty suspended metal standard-issue cubicle shelf in N's cube, reverberating through my head.

Now granted, this is no 3,000 lb cement tile, like in the big dig. But given the distance I jumped from my chair, it might as well have been.

One would think, that when a compressed paper acoustical ceiling tile comes crashing down on a cubicle wall, the remaining space would be empty. One would be wrong. Because, you see, Jose had seen the leak early that morning. Knowing there was still water draining into our ceiling, he had placed a couple of other acoustical tiles up into the opening to help absorb the water. "These tiles can take a lot of water, you know."

So now, I can spend the afternoon looking forward to another layer of soggy acoustical tile crashing down, hitting the cubicle wall and bouncing in little soggy bits all over my.

I think I'll go home.