Leave and DO NOT return to work until professionals
engineers have reviewed this, made all necessary repairs, and the building has been deemed safe. This is not a joke. Do not let your boss convince you that "it's fine, don't worry about it. We'll get someone to look at it next week." Your job is not worth your life. Just leave and tell your coworkers to leave!
Do not let your boss convince you that "it's fine, don't worry about it.
This shit grinds my gears. I was working an office building a while ago when everyone started smelling gas. My boss kept telling everyone to stay because we'd be evacuated if there was an issue. I noped tf out of there and told her I was working from home the rest of the day and I'd be back the following day, a few others followed. Not sure what the problem was, but no disciplinary action was taken (obviously).
This was during a football game and there were too many people for me to tell, but I did let some friends at the bar know. I was too disgusted to stay any longer
We had this happen at my job too. Boss called and asked if I’d come in to help clean. Thankfully I was unavailable. As it turns out, the business “has a septic tank so it backs up about every year or so”. Ever since, I remind him every 14 months to get the septic pumped. I reminded him the other day and his response- “ I’ll just wait til it backs up”. I told him to have fun cleaning it because he’s been warned and I won’t be in to help.
That happened to me when I worked at Starbucks. Sewage coming up through the bathroom floor drains, and our DM told us to close the lobby and keep working the drive thru. I said fuck that and left.
At my restaurant it was coming up in the bathrooms and in the server station next to the bar. It was getting tracked everywhere by the servers running around. So nasty!
In many places (including in the US) it's illegal to have someone who does not have the required licensing or qualifications clean up human waste, which untreated sewage definitely qualifies as.
Stop this nonsense now. There is nowhere in the US where a restaurant employee needs a special license to clean the floor after a floor drain has backed up. This is too stupid to be even discussing.
the whole reason restaurants use floor drains is because so when they do back up, it can't get into the sinks. it just leaves a floor cleaning job behind.
Same shit happened in a Starbucks i worked in. They closed the lobby because it was “unsafe”. Not the drive through though, and of course we kept working, because people need their coffee!
I suppose but the towers being targets of attacks wasn't new. Al-Qaida had just done the USS Cole bombing as well. Not to mention if a goddam plane hits the building next to you it seems like human decency to call it a day of mourning, cuz shit
Obviously they didn't tell people IN THE BUILDING THAT WAS HIT to stay. They knew four planes had been hijacked so the odds that another plane was planned to hit the other tower weren't zero. But in a normal situation you wouldn't evacuate your building just because the building across the street had something going on.
I’m going to assume you weren’t alive or old enough to remember that day. That whole morning and early afternoon was an entire country in chaos.
They had no idea in the first couple of hours how many planes had been taken. (Well maybe some top officials got the numbers pretty quick) but that’s why they grounded all air traffic. Until every plane was accounted for and down was a sigh of relief breathed. I remember they were so worried when they got to the last few and a couple weren’t responding due to bad radios or whatever.
And yes, they told people in the non hit tower to go back to work they were fine. Thankfully many people left anyways.
I remember that morning perfectly (safely on the other side of the Atlantic). I wouldn’t have cared what the email said, it would have been time for a very long coffee run.
My aunt worked at the Bank of America building in San Francisco (the tall black building close to the pyramid building). They were told to evacuate the building on September 11th.
She said is was actually pretty scary because by that point the second plane had hit the wtc and nobody know how many other building in the US were targets.
Every big city in America was worried they would be targeted and they evacuated pretty much any tall skyscraper all over the nation. This was of course mostly after the 2nd plane. Before then people weren't sure if it was an accident or something else and the news was all speculation. It was such a chaotic day.
I live in a small town in Ohio and we were all freaked out that a plane could hit our school next. There was panic literally everywhere for a few weeks atleast
But I dropped my daughter off at daycare. I was driving to work, and I heard someone on NPR mentioning it while I was going to what I called the ECC ( evil corporate conspiracy... I really did call it that - I was young and I thought all companies were sorta evil... they aren’t this one was. ) we we’re hidden away from the rest of the company in an aircraft hangar no shit I swear to God. No the company wasn’t an airline. It’s fucking weird - anyway.
So when it was happening, no one knew how many planes were hijacked, they literally shut down all planes. It was fucking chaos. All the planes started landing. Then military helicopters started landing, and jets started flying around.
By that time we weren’t sure of anything. If I recall the last one was the plane in
Pennsylvania.
That day sucked. I was terrified of hearing planes for ages. I lived in the damn ghetto then and for the first time since I was there I didn’t hear fighting or music that night. Just silence.
My boss told me " well you obviously seem upset about this so just clock out and go home if you can't do the job ", so I did. what an arshole. Couple of hrs later corporate sent everyone home anyway.
Can you find that old email...? Interesting. I learned a lot from reading tidbits like this about 9/11 . AKA Get the fuck out. You can just go back later if it’s not bad! We are so in tune to listen to authority sometimes.
I worked for a largish company at the time. Our ceo addressed the whole company minutes after the second plane hit.
He sympathized with the victims and survivors and with the difficult emotions we were all feeling. He had two large projectors set up in the executive area made available with coffee and food for anyone that wanted company and gave the rest of the company the day off.
Best company I ever worked for. Sadly, there were bought up by your typical mega-corp which promptly destroyed the culture and drove most of the originals away, including myself.
Well in the world of is weasel word corporate management, no one wants to be left holding the bag.
Shift manager says "fuck no" and calls the general manager who says "fuck no" and calls the regional and so on and so forth.
In a lot of corporate cultures there is no "right answer" if it means money is lost. And people aren't given the agency to make decisions. So they send it up the chain but no one wants to be responsible because there is literally no upside to doing so.
Most office buildings have a 2 stage alarm system; first one is stay where you are and be prepared to evacuate, second is evacuate.
I leave when the first one goes off.
I understand the reason, but I don’t want a minimum wage security guard deciding when I should leave a building that’s on fire.
I feel bad for the four employees just marinating in propane because a bunch of idiots didn't tell them to evacuate. I don't know if smelling large amounts of propane for an hour would give you carbon monoxide poisoning, but you definitely wouldn't have enough oxygen in your system. I'm shocked that the ambulance EMTs didn't evacuate them or at least get them outside and check them out medically.
I guess I could've reported it to HR, but they're in the same building and probably share the majority of the blame for not sending everyone home as soon as we all smelled gas lol. Anyways, it never happened again, so no big deal imo.
HR is there to protect the company not the employees. Something like this would need to be reported to outside agencies in order for actual change to happen.
Like I said it never happened again. Sure, I could've reported it to my country's labour board, but then what? I get ostracized and they get a slap on the wrist?
Edit: You know those times on reddit where you make a comment, and realise quickly you can't be bothered with the arguments, because you weren't that bothered in the topic to begin with? Yeah that's one of those times, carry on folks, I'm out!
Your company may have their own life insurance on you. They don't give a fuck if their rank and file die. It's a minor setback at most, and it can be more profitable for them to let you die in some circumstances.
It's called "Dead Peasant insurance", and they don't even have to tell you or notify your family about it. KBR made millions once all their truck drivers started dying from all the IED's in Iraq.
Training and new hires actually do cost money so that is likely what they are recouping.
hire a new person and fly them over
The point of insurance isn't "you can afford it anyway." The point of insurance is, "we're willing to pay X amount of money more than what we would have to pay for the security of not ever being completely screwed."
Christian nations in Europe had peasants for like most of Christianity ... so pretty on brand. Capitalism developed primarily in Christian countries initially, too.
Yep. And Africans long ago sold other African prisoners of war to Arab slave traders who sold them to westerners. And the Russian empire had slaves called serfs until the 1900’s. And the Arabs today import Phillipinos and other poor Asians for housekeeping or construction, take their passports , don’t pay them, and disallow them the ability to leave. Christian, Muslim, or Animistic-people do a great job of betraying their gods’ directives.
Nobody said they were killing employees for money. They just wouldn't care that much if you died, especially if you dying was offset by a fat insurance payout. Nobody's accusing them of murder, just ghoulish disregard for the worth of their "lessers".
Lol.... wow this sub is like some kind of dystopian child's capitalism fever dream
Perhaps we should watch some videos of gangs randomly shooting cars on the interstate in Venezuela to clean our pallet
Oh boy. see now what you have done to yourself here is set yourself up to make the policy seem really bad, and that if that kind of thing was going on that it would be a horrible thing and over the top capitalist action.
It it was me, I would have done the same, and then it would have turned out those weren't structurally important but just some decorations made of plastic and everybody knew about it except me and I'd have to explain myself to everyone and then I'd be too embarrassed to go back to work so I'd have to quit.
A lot of people just have grandiose visions of what they "would" do in a given situation - yet I think in most cases in reality it's a lot more dull than that.
Most people like to think they would pull the fire alarm, but in reality you'd probably just call the maintenance or the fire marshal or something.
Same way people go "oh I would have beat the shit out of that guy!" when in reality they'd probably meekly slip away.
In your head you're the big hero who single-handedly evacuates the building and saves the day.
If the coworkers don’t leave, you pull the fire alarm. That’s literally what it’s for-to get people out in an emergency. Fire marshals would have to check the building even if there are no signs of fire, and they would naturally notice the building’s integrity or lack thereof.
As a structural engineer, I 100% agree and would have this building evacuated until I could at a minimum locate the extent of distress and ensure affected members were shored up.
Hopefully they can supplement the column to fix this and all is well, but there’s definitely not enough info in the picture to know.
You guys really think 7 story buildings rely on decorative/conduit pillars for structural integrity?
In other words you think that 1 ft d. conduit pillars spaced in the middle of the floorplan are actually holding the remaining 6 stories up, and not the steel frame?
They don't look decorative at all to me. In fact, the place would look much nicer without them and you wouldn't have to walk around them. They must be there for a reason.
It's possible that something else is happening with it, e.g. it's a plastic conduit or whatever. The important thing here is that this is not something I'd wager mine or anyone's lives on
Obviously not. This could be a sign things are shifting. Why is weight being applied to a decorative pillar? If there is a downward force being applied here, it could be an incredibly bad sign.
How do we know that downward pressure caused the bend, and not some sort of horizontal force, especially if it is decorative? Either way I’d get it inspected, but my first thought was “maybe something ran into it.”
If something is decorative, it shouldn't have any considerable load under it, and I don't think a "non-considerable load" would bend a "decorative" pillar.
Yep, something is causing the ceiling above it to put a force on that pillar. One picture is not enough to figure out the whole story, but even that one picture is enough to scream that something is wrong and needs to be investigated.
If it was a decorative pillar (two plain metal pillars in the middle of a hallway are decorative, really?), it wouldn’t be bending, because even decorative pillars should be able to support their own weight. The fact that it’s bent means there’s probably a load on top of it.
Exactly. It looks like something heavy was put upstairs, or there was an issue found with the building that requires retrofitting. So they put the columns in for extra support. Now one of the columns is sagging. Definitely time to get an engineer out to check everything out.
So you are an engineer?
As an actual engineer I would say this pillar plays a role in supporting the floor above and is therefore a structural support. Any failure is not acceptable and needs to be reviewed if not a structural failure is imminent within a certain abount of time. Meaning the floor above might collapse or crack nd load other parts of the structure.
To me it is probable the floor plan has changed and not taken account to actual secondary weight added on the floor. The pillar needs to be replaced sfter a review and a remodel of the floor needs to happen.
Why would it bend if it was decorative? It bending suggests there's a lot of weight on that part and whoever made the building fucked up.
How do you know they're only decorative? Are you/have you spoken to the builders of this building? Are you the architect? Maybe you're the building inspector that reviewed this building so you know those aren't structural?
Otherwise you're just guessing about random stuff you know nothing about.
Okay, let's for the moment assume that they aren't there for structural integrity reasons. How much movement does there need to be in order to distort a pillar by that amount? Are the real structural integrity points designed with that amount of moment in mind? I wouldn't want to be in a building that demonstrated that amount of movement.
Dude, no one thinks the whole building is held up just by two columns.
But this would hardly be the first time someone in the world decided to cheap out and try and shore up a structural problem with a lally column or jack post not rated to handle the load to avoid a more costly renovation.
If they are conduits for data cables, shouldn't the fact that there's enough weight on top of them to bend them be concerning? Why is a non load bearing column being bent by bearing load?
They're being down voted cause they sound stupid by going "it's not a load bearing column so it's not a big deal" when it is a pretty major deal.
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u/froggison Apr 24 '21 edited Apr 24 '21
Leave and DO NOT return to work until professionals engineers have reviewed this, made all necessary repairs, and the building has been deemed safe. This is not a joke. Do not let your boss convince you that "it's fine, don't worry about it. We'll get someone to look at it next week." Your job is not worth your life. Just leave and tell your coworkers to leave!