Story of another Sawtooth

[quantumii]

Hi,

This story has both a good side and a bad side.

My wife works at a local newspaper, and she told me that they were clearing out some old equipment from the building. One day, when picking her up from work, I went inside and saw two large cages with at least 20+ Macs in them! There were also many P4 based SFF Compaq machines, and some 19" LCD monitors. The Mac's were G3's and G4's, and also a beige G3.

I was only able to look at them, because the IT manager had left for the day, and we did not know if we were allowed to rescue any of the machines.

The next day the wife asked the IT manager if we could have a Mac or two, and he said, "Take as many as you want!. Hey, that's great. She called me and gave me the good news.

Great, I thought, I'll get the lot when I pick her up from work this evening.

In the meantime I got an SMS from her with not-so good news. She managed to get one G4 Sawtooth before the eWaste was collected.

The story she told we was the following:

After she spoke to the IT manager, She then went to the cages to get some machines, only to be greeted by an idiot of a janitor, which started scolding her for trying to take a machine. He tried to prevent her from taking anything, and while she tried to explain, the IT manager came to the recsue. He said that she already had asked for permission, and that he had told her she could have anything she wanted. The janitor still behaved like a moron, and let her only rescue one before the eWaste was picked up.

So many machines, and I could only get one rescued. If we had known the evening before, I could have gotten them all, but noooooo. The janitor poured sand in the machinery and stopped my planned rescue mission. He and persons like him are the reason why so many good machines head for the dump. If he had been able to think, we could have taken all the machines I wanted to get and set them aside for me to pick up in the evening. Bah, what a moron.

The good thing is that the G4 works perfectly, and had all original parts, including the HDD with OS 9.1 on it. I installed 10.4 on it yesterday, and upgraded the ram to 768MB.

Still, I feel bad for all the other machines I could not get, especially the Beige G3.

 

[Concorde1993]

He and persons like him are the reason why so many good machines head for the dump.

I understand how you feel. I was supposed to receive in December 14 (yes, 14) Panasonic AG-1980 S-VHS decks from the IT department at the school board after having a discussion with the ICT guy I work with, and one of the IT managers. Some of the 1980s were supposedly in "pristine condition"- as in they never left board headquarters - and still had their original documentation, etc., while the others were from other secondary schools across Dufferin-Peel that were just retired from regular use.

Anyway, the day the ICT guy was supposed to pickup the 1980s, and deliver it to my school (my school had their annual "Jingle Jam" event going on the week prior to Christmas Break, and he said he was bringing in some extra monitors, mics, etc. for the setup), he discovered that the units had been disposed of the night before by yes- you guessed it- a group of janitors who had, for some bizarre reason, not received the memo to leave these machines alone. Thus, an opportunity lost (although I already have a decent editing system composed of two AG-1980s, and a JVC duplicator).

I really don't understand why there is so much miscommunication with janitors (not to say that all of them are bad- there are some I know at my school that inform me when they are about to throw out some old equipment- be it A/V equipment, or computers). It kind of makes you wonder if the management is really all that effective within an institution.

 

[Unknown_K]

Could be the janitors end up splitting the stuff with the recycling guys.

 

[quantumii]

So it is not only me who experiences things like this.

On the plus side, the janitor in the office building where I work allows me to take whatever I want from the ewaste, and from what I have experienced the only ewaste that leaves the building is useless stuff that none of the employees in the building want.

If I throw away something that someone else can use, it is usually gone from the room within an hour, so this room functions more like a free marketplace than a recycling room