Mice et al.

The maintenance guy is so simple that it hurts but sometimes, he is one of the rare people who actually act reasonably.
Since the hotel cat was ran over by car (well, she might have suffered a heart attack in the curb, I didn't get the autopsy done and it was an old cat), there's nobody to deal with the rodents so we got a bit of mice infestation in the dry storage. The kitchen staff didn't say anything because they are too lazy to open their mouths and weren't it for the maintenance who told me about traps, baits and that mice prefer cheescake to bacon, I wouldn't have found out for a while because I don't check every nook and cranny that often.
I went to check because mice in food are no fun and the food safety inspectors would go ballistic if they happened to find the rodent turd which I found among packages leaking flour, oat flakes and what else so I went to do some yelling, to which the chef on duty said Oh, wee little mousies, isn't that cute and gave me hurt looks when I yelled more and ordered her to check everything NOW and whatever package is opened/broken but mouse-free will be put into a sturdy container. Which sorta happened but the mice still came and went. Maintenance guy said that one disappeared with the spring trap. (Rocky mouse, aparently.)
Two days later, I went to check the state of matters, found even more mouse dung, went to the kitchen and yelled more. The other shift gave me another series of hurt looks and chef said But I cleaned the place a while ago.
Yesterday, there was more of mouse dung and I just went ballistic and ordered the kitchen staff to remove everything from storage, check every package, yes, package, not crate, chase all mice, spiders and dirt away...

Maintenance found out that the anti-everything netting in the vent was not tightly set so he fixed it, did most of the shuffling and cleaning. However, the cooks' basic human rights were severely violated by all this totally unnecessary work because they needed to bend their precious backs, and who cares about excrements in their lunch. If I could press and preserve the moment when they gave me the look of kicked puppies, I would. Because, my cynical heart rejoices every time I remember it.

As the old story answers the question of how the mice eradication went: Two injured, three bruised and five seriously ridiculed

The maintenance artists are redoing my office. Moving the old furniture out was a bit of a task as it tended to disintegrate - which was the primary reason why I started this refurbishing adventure, I certainly do mind if the shelves threaten to collapse on me. I said that it's up to them to sort ouf which bits of the plywood and that sort of chipboard that's called compressed darkness around here could be useful for some shelving and to toss the rest. At which they pondered that the furniture looks quite good. After a few kilos of sawdust falling out of the solid-ish looking pieces, they caved. The IT guy came to check the wiring. After removing around five kilometres of cables that were not connecting anything, the place almost looked neat. But for the dirtiest carpet ever, which was ugly and dirt-coloured to start with.
It cost me around 130 euros to get a hardwearing carpet made most likely from recycled polyethylene bottles which is blue, pretty and will probably outlast the end of the world, cockroaches, Keith Richards and a very special cat that was recently rehomed from a shelter I know and whose name was Satan for several good reasons. Ikea post-giftmas sale provided the rest. The provisional workspace is truly Procrustean and I can't wait to get to an actual table. Coffee table with an orange crate (as used to hold oranges, it's actually mostly black, not that it mattered much) to lift my laptop to a reasonable working height is not the last cry in ergonomy and my back hints the same.