Sniff, Sniff

I was sitting at my desk around midmorning yesterday and I thought I smelled something burning. I didn’t take this lightly as my entire world is flammable and if this place is going to go up in flames it is going to go up in flames while I am not here. If this place wants to burn down it is going to have to burn down over the weekend or after business hours. I don’t get paid enough to try to rescue state property from the flames.

I sat there and sniffed a little, defiantly something rubberyish or metal burning. This can’t be good; I looked at the floor around my desk and decided that I was a few oily rags short of a real fire hazard. I did a little fire proofing and ground sniffing and I still smell the rubbery smell, I checked the computer cords and sniffed the hard drive and nothing seemed amiss. So I sat there and sniffed some more. No, still burning. I went out in the outer office area and talked to a surveyor and she smelled it too. So it wasn’t just me smelling the burning rubber and it wasn’t my computer trying to burn the building down! Good, I felt better. A little high, but better because the smell was stronger out there. Clearly, this was not my fault.

The surveyor and I took turns sniffing her computer and then sniffing the outer office and agreeing that the smell was rubbery and burning and definatly not a good thing. We decided that we should tell some one. Since I was the least high from the fumes, I volunteered to go and report the odor.

You would be surprised how fast people move when you report something may be burning. I learned that while they will move fast they don’t do anything about the burning rubbery smell. They did what the high surveyor and I did, they sniffed... They did agree that the hallway smelled rubbery and it was indeed a burning rubbery smell, Great, I said, go down and sniff my office, it really has that smell of burning rubber. It really stinks the fumes re much more potent down there. I had no takers
I went to lunch, because now I had the munchies.

The other side of the building now smells the burning rubber odor. A little man in a campus uniform is wandering the halls. He’s there because he and his crew are cleaning the dead leaves off the roof and he swears up and down the smell is not emitting from their work.

I was now wondering if I could claim workers comp because by now I was really high from the fumes. I also have a stuffed up nose and the surveyor in the outer office claimed a brand new sore throat. Humph.

Hours past. The odor is still there.

The surveyor thought that the burning rubber smell was coming from the generator. It is on, she reasoned and it may be burning. We look at the generator. It isn’t smoking, it isn’t even making noise. My office still reeked.

Later on I start to worry because I was hearing voices. This is very disturbing as now I thought that I was not only high from the rubbery smell I was now suffering from rubbery smell induced auditory hallucinations! Great, I said to myself maybe Workers Comp can pay for my rehab. A few minutes later I take Workers off the hook for my rubbery smell rehab, because I was not having hallucinations! Yay. The little men outside were real! And they were really arguing with each other about the state of the generator! And they were not actually rubbery smell induced hallucinations! Boy was I ever relieved! They weren’t solving the problem arguing with each other, but they were defiantly really there.

My head hurt. I bet myself that people employed out in the private sector don’t have to deal with burning rubber induced headaches after spending hours with mysterious burning rubber odors, they get sent home while the burning rubber odor problem gets checked out. The state hates it’s employees.