return to the chamber of doom
Work was so slow at the vet hospital today that my supervisor sent me a message to suggest I stay at home this afternoon. However, as my internet access has been severely limited recently, his email remained sitting in my inbox, unread, until about thirty minutes ago. Given the projects assigned to me today, the thought of remaining in bed was extremely appealing. My tasks for the day? To file loose paperwork from ten years ago into the corresponding medical records at the old hospital and put the boxes there in order. The same place that caused me so many problems last week.
The lights still don't work and it's absolutely sweltering inside - courtesy of hot water pipes and no air conditioning - but at least I had a flashlight with me this time. Boxes in the archive room are stacked five or six high on a series of pallets, and naturally the ones I needed were closer to the bottom than the top. After filing all the loose paperwork my next responsibility was to arrange the boxes so that those of the same year were clustered together rather than intermixed with those of other years. This involved pulling boxes from their stacks on the pallets and rearranging their placement in the room. All 270 of them, in a dark, unventilated, 30°C, enclosed space.
Worst of all, the pallets are falling apart. There were several occasions when my foot would shoot between boards in the darkness, banging my ankle each time. Of particular concern was having a board break underneath me - my foot hit a cylindrical metal object underneath the pallet and my ankle twisted to the side in response. At first glance it appeared to be a shell casing from a gun, but it was so large that its only practical use would have been to put down a rhinoceros. And really, why would a rhinoceros be hiding in the old radiology room?
On the plus side I didn't die. All the boxes are now in sections by year and everything from 1996 is in exact numerical order. Rearranging everything cleared off two pallets, which leaves room for another 90 boxes of records - which I have heard I'll be moving over tomorrow and the day after. Merde.