Inner Darkness

I love smart buildings. Its so nice to have the lights come on when you enter a room, and go off when you leave. Its nice to be able to program the room temperature to be comfortable when you are likely to be there, and conserve energy when you normally are not there.

Sometimes though, the building outsmarts itself. Like this morning. One of the women staff members was in the ladies bathroom, taking care of business, when all of a sudden, the lights went out and she was plunged into darkness.

Now this bathroom is in the interior of the building and doesn't have any windows, so it was really dark. She moved quickly from surprise to annoyance, and waved her arms around in the air to trigger the motion detector to switch the lights back on.

Nothing. She waved harder. Still nothing. Apparently the sensor is by the door, and is not affected by motion in the stalls. Bugger. She could hear voices outside the door, and was about to call for help when she realized they were all male voices. Scratch that. She waited for a bit, hoping someone would come in and trigger the lights. But the building isn't open yet, and there aren't many females *in* the building, and there are other bathrooms.

Then she remembered her cell phone in her pocket. She hesitated, feeling silly calling someone to come to her aid just to turn the lights on. And then she realized that her cell phone had a flashlight! Ta-da! Technology saves the day.

We all laughed when she told us - and realized that someone needs to change the setting on the motion dectector. At least to give a longer time frame before shutting off, if not to move the sensor to a more effective location. Yes, as marvelous and intelligent as this new building is, it needs tweaking over the next year or so until all the little human elements have been rectified. A work in progress indeed.