So you're telling me to start a food truck I need to go to the morgue and the dog pound? If someone told me that I would assume they were going to ask for a pipe stretcher or headlight fluid next.
Holy crap!
WTF lol. I don't know whether to cringe that you're not making this up, or laugh that you're not making this up.
LOL, so it's not as weird as it reads. But we liked to play up the absurdity but it's really not that unusual in context. I expect most local government agencies share buildings.
At least back in 2003-05 the Health Inspectors HQ was located in the same building as the city medical examiner. They're both are entities of the Health Department so it makes some sense that they might be in the same building. In those days, everything was done by paper so one would either have to mail their applications or show up in person.
Meanwhile the field health inspectors would work out in the Districts, typically in back rooms of the respective public health centers (clinics). Which is pretty logical and efficient.
Here's where it gets wonky though. The health inspectors and vector control (mosquitoes and rats) are in the same division. People could go back and forth between being a clipboard jockey and a rat catcher during their career. If you have any background in public health and its history then you totally understand how that could happen. Both Sanitarians and Pest Control have the same underlying mission of protecting public health by improving or maintaining sanitation and both gained prominence at the same time in the early 20th century. We had a few other obscure jobs that would have been more efficiently executed by other agencies, but those were artifacts of 100-150 year old laws that no one wanted to update because it would cause more headaches.
Animal control is in a different division but uses similar infrastructure with vector control ergo they shared a facility. Animal control got an earmark from the Commonwealth and got a huge new facility in 2003. It used to be located in district 5, but got moved to a location at the nexus of 5, 9, 10. Vector moved with them, and 5 was looking for any excuse to get out of their old building. So Animal Control, Vector, and 5 all moved to the new building. Meanwhile The health center admins at 9 really liked the office space that the Sans used and arranged for them to move to the new building too.
Which was annoying because HC9 was in the geographic center of the district near all the main transportation routes, and animal control was tucked in the far SE corner near nothing!
It's really difficult to inspect food trucks. They move around and have non-standard hours. So we had to schedule their inspections weeks ahead of time. The vendors would arrive as early as possible (i.e 7-9 am) to our location for their "surprise" inspections.
And BTW, you'd think that if someone knew they were getting inspected that they would make an effort to clean or fix things ahead of time. pffttt no! Maybe 10% would attempt to do anything to look better. Maybe 5% would actually look super clean for their inspection... and TBH those are the high achievers that are always clean. I would sometimes have to schedule things at stationary facilities and it would be the same result. 90% wouldn't bother to do anything to prepare... and they act all surprised when they get shut down for something they could have "corrected" 30 min before I arrived.
Anyway, since 5 and 9 worked out of Animal Control, the vendors in those districts would have to go to the dog pound for their inspections.
FWIW, we treated stationary vendors (food trucks permanently parked) like regular stationary businesses. They'd get the usual surprise inspections.
