On Jan. 16, an employee at the Texas Department of Insurance noticed an unwelcome pest in her fifth-floor office in one of the towers of downtown Austin’s William P. Hobby Jr. State Office Building.
Her maintenance work order described the encounter: “Rat was in the ceiling and just poked his head out to look at an employee.”
It’s just one of hundreds of work orders submitted to the Texas Facilities Commission, which functions as the property manager for many state buildings, by employees working in the Hobby Building between September 2010 and March 2019. The employees have requested services for rats, bugs and other pests, according to public records obtained by The Texas Tribune.
In one work order, ants were dropping from the ceiling onto an employee’s hands while she worked at her computer. In another, an employee put on a coat at the end of the day, and a live rat jumped out of the pocket. Other work orders described cockroaches crawling across desks, in urinals and jumping out of desk drawers. Some employees reported being bitten by bugs while in the office. And employees often reported hearing rats moving around in the ceiling, sometimes shaking the ceiling tiles.
"Be aware, there's rats": Workers in a state office building describe a constant pest infestation
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'They're chewing everywhere:' Dallas woman fed up with rat-infested apartment
Not only in CA. See what Republicans have done to Texas.
