Yesterday, I switched on my office's lights and they were as bad as ever. There are two of them: one didn't work and the other buzzed loudly and constantly whenever it was on. I decided to put in a request to the university's Estates section asking them to put in some new fluorescent tubes. I figured that they might conceivably get around to it over Christmas.
I was wrong. They showed up that morning with two new fittings. They had to remove the existing ones completely because they were so ancient they were probably older than the ceiling. I was a bit alarmed as I had three meetings with students lined up, but fortunately (if not entirely unpredictably) none of the students showed up so I didn't have to chat to them while listening to drills making holes in concrete. I went home and worked from there instead.
In the same email I asked for my lights to be fixed I mentioned the huge gap in the wall where the radiator goes through to the next room. This has been in its current decrepit state since before I moved into the office, and every time I point it out to someone from Estates they tell me it needs seeing to. They're right, it does. That doesn't mean it ever gets seen to, though.
Anyway, when I got to work this morning I was pleased to learn that I now have two new light strips, both of which work and neither of which sounds like a dentist's removing the decayed part of a tooth.
OK, so the workers forgot to lock my office after they'd finished, but I don't keep exam questions on my work PC so if any student did happen to saunter in they wouldn't have been in luck. I think my books were probably safe, because I'm not certain that the majority of my students actually know what a book is — they read everything in digital form.