And it involves the institution I work in.

The library built a brand new building that opened five years ago, using community donations and a state grant. The building committee hired a reputable, regionally known contractor, who jobbed out much of the peripherals.

The Youth Services department (my kingdom) occupies the whole top floor. Since the building opened, we have had no fewer that 27 leaks in the roof. One of them took out two sections of picture books, over the weekend, so I lost a number of them to mildew, many out of print. We also lost the bookshelf in the parenting section in another accident. The roof was contracted out to a third party, and we're still fighting about who is responsible for the damage.

We may be the only building on Earth in which the top floor is colder than the bottom floor, but only in the summer. I need a sweater in July. I need short sleeves in winter. The hardcover book bindings are beginning to suffer from glue failure because of the humidity variations. Yes, the climate control system was jobbed out to an independent subcontractor. At least they are still working to remedy the problem...for a fee.

But the electrical wiring takes the cake. The subcontractor who did that managed to wire things in ways that caused the breakers to trip if we plugged two appliances into one outlet. The computers suffered from surges. Several switches didn't control anything. Eventually, we had the manufacturers of the breaker boxes in to examine the job the subcontractor had done. They told us that ground wires were left hanging unconnected throughout the building, that the main box connected to the outside contained twice as many connections as it was designed to accommodate, and that the wires inside were blackened from overload. (I saw the wires myself.) They offered to replace it for free and provide us with a second one if we would let them take the original one for testing. They said that the box was never intended to handle that kind of load, so the data they gathered from it would be valuable to their R&D people. They assured us that we had not been far from a big fire.

The subcontractor has conveniently gone out of business. The contractor says it's the subcontractor's fault. I myself would like to get my hands on the state inspector, who has retired. We have a good electrician working for us now, a local outfit, courteous, prompt and competent, but they're not cheap and our problem isn't their fault anyway.

As if we didn't have enough money problems.