I seem to have made it through my first near-week as a building engineer. I don't know how long it'll last but for now, I'm alive.

I have six properties. Two are piers on the waterfront and one is an interconnected set of ancient buildings downtown. They're all mixtures of high-falutin' office space and retail space that's heavy on the restaurant end. Most of the retail accounts take care of themselves and, unless something goes wrong structurally, duties there boil down to stopping in and saying hello from time to time.

Many of the office spaces take care of themselves as well and the duties there are changing lamps and smaller stuff like that.

I also have a lot of "sprucing" duties and anything else the Chief Engineer hands me.

I've been kind of tossed into the ocean here. The company seems to be short one or two engineers and the Chief has had to take over the engineer duties at one very important property near mine. I feel sorry for him in that he has his building, his regular CE duties and now a neophyte to train. He's also confessed to being the type of guy who's often short on specifics.

Mix his obvious lack of time and inability to be precise in with my naivete and disorientation with everything from the layout of the properties to what time to eat breakfast and you have a recipe for the stress I've been feeling all week.

Add to all of that a phone that's not compatible with my hearing aids and the need to call and be called all day long and, well, I don't know what you get but it ain't good.

That ain't-goodedness is why I opened this blog entry by saying that I don't know how long I'll last as a building engineer.

I realize that the first few weeks doing any new thing are going to be effed-up. I'm worried about that but not spasmodically so. On my third day the company we use to maintain our mechanical stuff came to one of my properties to install a drain on the sprinkler system's air compressor. The worst-case scenario was explained to me in about 30-seconds kinda like this: "If Ted can't get the drain installed within about thirty minutes, the air pressure in the sprinkler lines will drop below the minimum. The sensors will think the drop in pressure is due to a sprinkler head having melted in an actual fire. The sensors will trip and tell the water valves to open and fill the lines with water. If Ted runs into a problem, you have to call the alarm company, tell them to put the fire panels in bypass and then close three air valves in three separate rooms before the lines fill."

Yeah. Right. Happy Day Three.

Still, not the real worry-point. My biggest stress-maker right now is that I tried every Motorola phone at my local Nextel store yesterday and none of them work worth a shit with my hearing aids. They all buzz and click (I believe it's the network "talking") and add a layer of distortion to the sound.

Like most companies of our nature, we depend on the Direct Connect walkie-talkie system that the Motorola phones have as well as the interchangeability of the SIMs that store contacts and stuffs the phones hold.

If I can't use a phone with those properties, I may be toast.

Now, I hear you (heh) talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act and the fact that I must be accommodated since I was hired and yadda, yadda. That stuff is all nice in a very academic way but the real-life bottom line is, law or no law, I have to be able to perform to the company's expectations for my own sense of satisfaction.

Besides, it's not like they're refusing to accommodate me. The CE told me to go check out all the phones I could and come back with some choices and he'd go to the Bosses.

Unfortunately, it looks like the "choices" are "none of the above".