these are not my walls

My office at work is in a secured area; there's a number pad to enter in the security code, or you can buzz one of the employees to let you in if you don't know the code. Random people seem to know the code, as I always see them letting themselves in, so I'm not entirely sure how effective this "security" system is, but it's there.

Up until last week, my office was the only one with a working buzzer in it. So when people came to the door and buzzed, it would buzz in my office. Problem was, I was instructed in my first week there not to do anything about the buzzing, because I didn't know who anyone was, so I couldn't really be making decisions about whether or not to let people in. The buzzer was supposed to be moved into another office; had been "supposed to be moved" since January 2005, apparently.

As I'm sure you can imagine, nobody but me ever seemed to hear the buzzer. When nobody came to the door, people would think maybe the buzzer didn't work, so they'd keep pressing it. They'd think maybe they weren't pressing it hard enough, or long enough, so they'd hold the button down. For a long time. Eventually, I would just get up and let them in, because good christ an axe murderer would be preferable to that noise.

Last week, they finally moved the buzzer, and there are theoretically 4 offices with working buzzers now, none of them mine. I *still* appear to be the only person who hears the buzzer most of the time, though, because I'm still answering the damn door. Doors, I should say; there are two, one at each end of the hallway, and the buzzer for each sounds exactly the same.

My office window, as you may recall, opens out onto the parking lot. Today, someone's car alarm was going off, intermittently. All. Day. I went down to investigate, but couldn't find the car. I'm not sure what I would have done if I had found the car; get a baseball bat? Leave a strongly-worded note? Perform a powerful cursing ritual?

There's something wrong with our photocopier at work; it emits a loud buzzing noise - not dissimilar to the door buzzer - every 10th copy or so. It has needed repair for some time, but the person in charge of authorizing the repair is the same person was in charge of getting the door buzzers moved. As you can imagine, none of us are holding our breaths. This afternoon, one of the secretaries had to make many, many copies.

One of my neighbours has been singing Celine Dion songs for the past hour. Badly.

I think I might actually be in some level of hell.