They're repaving our parking lot at work. Aside from being a major pain in the butt, they didn't notify us.

I pulled up to the building yesterday to be confronted by orange cones and a demolished looking parking area. So I pulled around the side entrance, parked where there weren't any cones and went inside. There was a very chatty woman in the elevator (there seem to be a lot of these in my building, but we'll save that for another day) and we started to mutually gripe about the inconvenience. I mentioned that I didn't mind parking away from my normal spot, but I wish someone would have told me earlier. She responded with "Oh but they did! The landlord sent out 3 notices about a month ago!" I thanked her very much, got off the elevator at my floor, walked straight in to my desk, and made my call. It rings about 8 times (they never answer right away). I get the receptionist, who is usually very curt until you make the point of being an irate tenant at which point she becomes all sweetness and light. I demand to know why we weren't notified about the repaving. "Oh that's not possible. We sent faxes to everyone March 25th, and then one 2 weeks ago with the resecheduled date, and one on Friday as a reminder." I responded that we've gotten the faxes about the recent thefts in the building and the hit and run incident in the parking lot, but nothing about repaving. "Are you a sub-tenant?" Ok, yes we are a subtenant..."Then it's the main tenant's responsibility to make sure you get the notices." When I try to question why we get some notices and not others..."Take it up with them."

Ok, I give up and decide to go talk to our friendly neighbors across the hall. One problem, they don't have a receptionist any longer and I don't really feel like approaching their CFO (my only other contact there) with a question about notices from the landlord. So I go talk to my boss, to see if he has any better contacts to talk to. He tells me to get the landlord back on the phone and get the number of a woman in their main office in St. Louis, whom he's spoken with before (again, have to save this one for another day).

So these are my marching orders, and like most of the ones I get from him, I decide to try a less abrasive way around the problem first. I go to the landlord's website to see if I can find any other contact information. No such luck. I call the landlord again and speak to the receptionist, and ask her for the woman's phone number. She stutters and puts me on hold. She comes back on the line in 2 seconds "Is this about the parking lot again?" Yes, of course. It seems my question has had the desired effect. "You know our building manager is right there, why don't I have her stop by."

I WIN!

The building manager stops by, we have a nice little chat and magically we got an apology email and a guarantee that we will receive all notices from now on, if not by fax then from the building manager personally.

So all is well. Sort of. They're still paving today, meaning I have to park next door in the Holiday Inn parking lot. And there's no way to get to the door of our building from the hotel next door without walking across some section of sticky tar. It being 90 degrees today in APRIL is not helping the situation. So I managed to ruin the bottoms of my sandals, but happily I also managed to mark the carpets on my floor with sticky black footprints as well as leaving a little trail of mulch wherever I go since I also managed to pick some of that up on my way in.

Lesson of the day: I really need to learn when I should be a hardass about things, and when I should bring along a cruddy old pair of shoes.