PA and Secretary Community - Deskdemon.com

Meaning, having a headache from construction elsewhere in the building.

There's been banging going on directly over my head for the past 5 hours.  I guess they're working on the mechanical floor that's directly above us.  Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang all. day. long.  I've taken some aspirin, but it's not doing much since I can't get away from the noise.  We've asked about whether this work can be done overnight, but The Powers That Be have a whole list of bureaucratic reasons why that can't happen.   And they can't even tell us when they expect it to be finished!   

Earplugs/headphones aren't possible since I need to be able to hear others and answer the phone.  What else can one do?  This has been going on intermittently for weeks now!

A few years ago I sat in a building site while work went on around me.  Looking back I can't believe I did it.  There were dust and paint fumes every day.  Not one person came to me to see if I was ok or if I needed to be relocated while the work was going on.

Any chance you could work at a free desk or in another office for a while?  That is a little bit much to take on a daily basis.

HR should really get involved for heatlh and safety reasons.

It's quiet today so far.  Part of what's so crazymaking is the fact that you never know when it's going to start or stop! 

What I DID do today was set up a reminder on my calendar to pop up telling me to get out of the building for at least 15 minutes, or at least down to the lobby where you can't hear it. 

Did you even get warning the work was going to start, never mind finish?

Well...the building is only two years old and we knew that there would be periodic "finishing" that would need to happen, but this specific instance, no, no warning or anything.  There never is.  Very annoying to say the least.  I mean, what if I had scheduled a conference call and that banging had just started overhead with no warning?