I’ve become involved in a project to help manage a large building. And by “large,” I mean big.

The building is four stories and the width of a city block. It was built somewhere around 1916. There are quite a few people working in offices there, and there’s quite a bit of space yet to be leased.

The number of repair items is just shy of overwhelming. There are somewhere on the order of 60-odd air conditioning units in the building. There are about 10 miles of hallways. There are tunnels in the basement running the length of the building. There’s an attic stretching the length of the building. There are light fixtures, light bulbs, faucets, toilets, locks, more locks, clogged drains, downspouts. The ring of keys weighs about thirty pounds.

The building itself is in good shape, but those things necessary for human occupation are run down, wore out, neglected, and abused.

Then there’s a tree that fell over in the parking lot. There’s the air conditioning chiller unit that needs cleaning. Oh, and by the way, the shrubbery around the unit needs to be cut back so the leaves from the shrubbery don’t clog up the unit.

There are numerous parking spaces, and almost all of them are assigned by number. Some of the tenants ignore the assignment system and park in “Visitor” spaces closer to the building. Some of these tenants are not going to like it when we begin issuing parking tickets. I have witnessed one tenant parking in a handicapped space right at the back door. Yes, she has a handicapped permit, but no, I don’t believe she’s handicapped.

The previous landlord was lax in an amazing amount of details. Nothing ever got fixed, but tenants could stash junk in unrented spaces. As we make repairs, we’re asking tenants to move their junk. We’ve heard from every one of them how the previous landlord let them stash their junk there. We have to remind them that the previous landlord is no longer there, and meanwhile we make some improvement to their space. Some of the tenants are beginning to understand that we mean to do right by them and the building, and that we are fair about it. Some of the tenants don’t yet get that these improvements we are seeking to make require cooperation on their part, and these few tenants are quite troublesome.

But most of the tenants do see the slow but steady progress we are making. Most of the tenants do engage in helping do their part, and more and more we see them doing so with a positive attitude. The positive attitude is slowly spreading in spite of the mountain of obstacles presented by this monstrosity of work.

Every day, we try to do a little bit of good. Every day, something else breaks.

The stuff that breaks has a great deal of patience.

We have patience, too. But we also have the added strength of a growing team.