State Workers’ Digs Not All Shiny, Especially Sob-2

With its mildew-blackened and broken sidewalk, water-stained carpet, bare concrete walls and grids of cubicles under fluorescent light, this is an office building Dilbert would love.

Welcome to Office Building 2, or SOB-2 as it is affectionately known. It’s one of the most cavernous and despised state office buildings on the Capitol campus.

This gruesome block of concrete is marooned in a confounding morass of plazas, ramps and sidewalks, with no access to the street.

It is home to more than 1,000 souls who toil for two government agencies: Social and Health Services and the Department of Information Services.

Media reports about slick state office buildings erected in Olympia over the past several years overlook the fact that thousands of employees still work in airless, dingy, depressing spaces.

“We call this death row,” sings out Lyle Quasim, secretary of the Department of Social and Health Services as he surveys the corridor where deputy secretaries work. Until the demands of the job inevitably push them out.

They are the lucky ones: The big cheeses get offices around the perimeter of the building with sunlight and a view.

In the interior, workers have a view of mud-brown carpet, concrete walls and oatmeal dividers with brown name tags. Splashes of color, where they occur, have an odd, whistling-past-the-graveyard look amid the overwhelming drear.

The concrete probably was supposed to look modern. But the overall effect is somewhere between a prison and an airplane hangar.

Visitors, once they figure out where the entrance to the building is, are greeted with concern by employees who assume everyone who enters will get lost in the confusing floor plan.

But SOB-2’s nothing. Other state employees work in underground parking garages with no natural light and a ceiling of blown insulation.

Then there are the folks in temporary buildings out by the Olympia airport. Leaks in the roof have been bad enough to damage computers.

So Olympia is not all marble and gilt. The deluxe stuff is in the Capitol, mostly. But even the stately dome houses warrens stuffed with office workers.

Even the Capitol’s most exclusive places, like the governor’s office, have flaws that yank their imposing image right back to earth.

The office has killer floor-to-ceiling velvet drapes with gold rope tiebacks. And for sheer size, this office has no equal. You could park a couple of buses in there, easily.

But it’s easy to tell Gov. Gary Locke has moved his desk from the corner where Mike Lowry used to keep it.

Just look for the big brown rectangular stain on the white rug.

Delicious tactic targets taste buds

Advocates trying to get lawmakers’ attention on an issue have been known to resort to all manner of tactics, from the comic to the aggressive.

But Spokane social service warriors tried one of the best strategies this week: food. From home.

A Homesick for Spokane lunch for Spokane-area lawmakers featured sandwiches from Domini’s big enough to stoke a wood stove, Craven’s coffee and alluring brownies from Lindaman’s.

There also were gift baskets stuffed with everything from black bean chili from Buckeye Beans to a book of poems written by kids at Crosswalk, a shelter for homeless kids.

The baskets were tied with a spray of fabric lilacs from the Lilac City.

“Alaska Airlines will never let us do this again,” groaned Marilee Roloff, CEO of Volunteers of America, who helped lug the food and baskets from Spokane.

“It was like Ma and Pa Kettle. Here we were with all these bags, all this stuff.”

For drinks, they figured lawmakers living on the West Side had gotten used to chic mineral water.

But they couldn’t bring themselves to spring for the expensive brands. “So we went for Safeway Select,” Roloff said.

“It was one of those Spokane dilemmas. You really want to be cool. But you don’t want to pay for it.”

, DataTimes MEMO: West Side Stories runs every other week.