[Spooky23]

I had to do some work at a customer datacenter, which was a converted print/mainframe room in a 70s high-rise with lots of windows.

The customer had built a wall blocking all of the windows in the late 80s (this was circa 2000), we had to go in the the area inbetween.... 10-15 years of no interior cleaning and high temps resulted in these weird formations of tar drips. It almost looked like a cave formation. Absolutely vile.

The story from the site staff was that the print and mainframe operators back in the day would essentially sit and continuously smoke, all day, all night. IIRC, we found a half dozen defunct cigarette machines.

[technofiend]

Hahahhaah. That's cool and disgusting at the same time. A former coworker shared with me he was tasked to investigate why the mainframe was throwing errors only at night. He discovered a couple of operators were rolling a couple and then disconnecting the air ducting to the mainframe to use as a covert way to vent their own exhaust.