Strip Mall Takeover

So recently, I was tasked with installing five communicators at a strip mall. Fire riser monitors, albeit one of them is a full-blown addressable system, because of what the occupancy was in the past. Four of them was doable, one of them turned out to be an old JCPenney that got gutted. Not shelled, I mean, like the ceiling tile still intact, but you can tell the MEP’s were trying to cut the place and they ran out of time and money or whatever.

My boss gets mad at me. I can’t do that one, it literally looks like something out of Silent Hill. There’s construction debris and broken glass everywhere and no running power no lights. He got mad at it took two days to do the dialers, but nobody does a technical sales walk-through at my company so that’s the very first thing I do. Sometimes you need conduit even for a NAPCO starlink, which one of the spaces it was block wall and it really had to be mounted on a four square box with a faceless mud ring.

Fast forward, now we’re doing annual inspections not even a week later. I discovered that two of the ADT focus cadet panels failed for one reason or another, and now boss wants pictures and a full walk-through. Meanwhile, we’re supposed to be doing our building report barcodes, and meanwhile, these are not all fire risers.

These inspections did not get done in one day, I feel like my boss’s boss, wanted it to be done in one day. They wanted a full barcode markup above the Silent Hill/JCPenney that’s abandoned, and my fellow sprinkler inspector had something to do after work, so I wasn’t gonna sit there and make him wait on me to do batteries at the previous suite since he also has to put a red tag on the JCPenney.

For the most part, I try to put work away after 3 PM, but this is one project that just seems to bother me. I did not manage to get a full barcode of the JCPenney because I had to escort the sprinkler guy out of the building so he get to his errands after work. I did not load test my batteries at the previous suite for the same reason, nor did I type up the model numbers and all. One of my other suites Horn strobes failed, so I have to send an email to supplement my inspection report.

That last paragraph I wrote, that should just wait till Monday, but I have a sneaking suspicion. They’re gonna say something about it and get mad at me again. Seven years of being in this line of work, I’m proud to tell people that I’m a fire alarm technician, but ever since I’ve had to check in with a service or a project manager it just seems like the joy get zapped out of it more and more.

Thanks for reading