Rough Neighborhood

I'm on a very weird engagement in Miami.

First, I was informed on Monday that I could only smoke in a certain area outside the building. The area literally is the Everglades. I was warned about alligators, and laughed, until I realized the guys were being serious. So now every time I smoke I have to keep an eye out for creatures that might want to eat or maim me.

Then, yesterday, there was a bomb threat on the building. I am not working for the government, I'm working for a small company in an industry that is not known for being dangerous. It's a phone shop. Ridiculous.

Now, today, I've been moved from my cube to a conference room across from my cube because a male employee physically assaulted a female employee. He was not fired because no one saw the incident. So they are moving him to my cube because my cube has two cameras trained on it (wish I had known that before - I probably wouldn't have eaten so many cookies yesterday - the guards were probably like "oh my god - she ate 5 cookies! Look, she's eating another one!"). Theoretically he could still hit someone off camera, like me, because the conference room does not have a camera and I'm in his line of sight, but try to tell the security here anything.

And, nice to know consultants are so trusted.

I won't even go into the shit show hotel IBM put me in, except to say the front desk called me because I left four pennies in the change tray in my rental car and they were worried someone would break in and take the change. So I had to go down the elevator, using my key to get access to the ground floor, and not taking the stairs because the stair well doors are all locked (ask me how I know that), and then walk through a gate to get to my car. Then repeat the process to get back into the hotel and up to my room. And the first night I was scolded by the parking lot guard for walking a mile down the street at 8 PM because "there are gangs!" and if I wanted to walk I was advised to use the gym facility in the hotel, which requires me to go through 3 key checkpoints to access, only to discover the treadmill isn't working right.

I need hazard pay...