For around six months now I’ve been living next to an actual real life archive, and it’s unnervingly similar to TMA! Here’s a few notable things from these past months:
-i watched a balding man in a very posh suit carry a massive antique briefcase out of the building and put it into his car at 4am
-at 12:30am i made direct eye contact with someone working at a computer on a floor I’d never seen anyone go before. (there’s a section of car park and pavement between my building and the archive so this was pretty impressive! )
-The smoking area is always full at weirdly specific hours of day and night (presumably breaks), and completely empty the rest of the time. Clearly archiving really does encourage a smoking habit!
-one of the floors has really bright LED lights which were left on day and night for a week, then off for four days, and now are on with every single blind closed.
-for the first few months I only ever saw three people go in or out of the building- a generic looking security guard who yells at people that park in front of the entrance; and a dishevelled looking man, pursued by another man from the smoking area.
-from my window I can see directly into a room that’s filled with mannequins! I couldn’t tell what they were at first due to the sheer amount, but they range from cpr dummies to full body mannequins.
-despite being able to see many desks I’ve only consistently seen two people working at them.
-the fire alarm once went off for hours and nobody evacuated.
-recently at 3am I watched a security guard from the building come out to feed bagels to the fox in the car park (not really that relevant but I thought it was quite nice)
-two of the windows have humanlike figures in them at all times, but they’re impossible to focus on so I have no idea what they are.