the bblog

wherein Fads complicate my Job

At work we've been going through Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), because it's not a corporate fad without a certification process to cash in on it. And I do mean cash in, dues are $5,000, and the various fees are charges are also measured in kilobucks. We've budgeted $50,000 for the certification process, because this is obviously far more important than a new HVAC automation system or upgrading the elevator control system. (Entrapments, which is the technical term for "elevator doesn't let the people inside, out", have tripled in the last six months. Which, you know, is bad.)

Anyway, as part of the LEED cert process, we're been moving to more efficient and lower mercury lamps. The 50R20 spotlights in the elevators have been replaced with 45R20s, (First number is wattage, second is base size, letter is base type) F8T5s are being replaced with some low mercury lamp, and the building standard bulb, the four foot FO32T8/730/ECO, has been replaced with the FO28T8/830XP/SS/ECO3. [239KiB .pdf] (Consumes four less watts, delivers the same light output, has superior color rendering and hardly any mercury; and shits unicorn giggles. It also costs four times as much as the FO32, but hey, I'm not paying for them.)

And that's the rub. You see, I use a lot of four foot T8's. As in, sixty or ninety tubes a week. So it's only reasonable that as part of a big Going Green initiative, changing a big thing like the building standard light bulb, you would first check that our supplier had plenty of it in stock. Right?

I placed an order for 240 bulbs on the 26th, and 140 of them were delivered on the 24th. Of July, twenty-eight friggin days later. And it wasn't even complete! It's kinda hard to change bulbs when I don't have any bulbs to change them with, guys!

But now I've got them, and everything's good! Except I blew through two cases doing all the stuff I couldn't do until I had light bulbs, which leaves me with not a lot of bulbs. And judging from their performance to date, I'll be waiting another month to get the next shipment in. And I'm running out of 45R20s, and FBO32/730s, and CF13DS/835s...

All I got is problems!