I was actually part of such a mystry room
First off, during primary school, there was one area that I often walked by but never was allowed to enter.
It was a big hall like storage room being the 2nd way connecting the workshops in the basement to the main floor.
There was a washer there that I always only could spot from afar, now I'm guessing it was some old industrial machine, something like a Huwa or Schulthess, definetly not a Miele.
The house keeping ladies washed there mops in there.
At some point during winter break it was replaced by a standard Miele VivaStar.
That vanished at some point as well, not being replaced.
Another mystery room was below my old dentist. Walking up the stairs you could spot a washer (cheap brand that was then sold by Aldi) that was used to wash the prxis clothing.
But the room I was actually part of was the liberay for school books at my "Gymnasium".
In 8th grade, the different clases of my grade got shuffeled around, thus, we also had new teacher.
The teacher that originally ran that liberay was going into retirement, and a completly new teach was to take over.
By coincidence, that teacher was our (verry awesome in my opinion) chemestry teacher together with our new physics teach.
Cause the old students that were doing that job were finishing school, they needed new once.
So it was the first lesson of a new grade, our classes head teacher (we were that class that had the 15 or so people in it that were in the advanced sports course, so he was a sports teacher as well) was explaining that we as a special class would have to be a symbol to other classes how to behave and thus we would be especially carefully teached, with only the greatest sucess and order in mind.
Suddenly, the door opend and a 6ft hunk of man in his early 30s entered the room.
He just plain interupted our teacher, introduced himself as our chemistry teacher and that he would need 4 of us to help.
My and my best friend next to me immediatly recognized the chance, our hands shot up as fast as never before and luckily, we were picked.
Now, that room was in the basement, next to one of our computer rooms, so not even that far of the normal daily passages.
But it was of course behind a large metal fire saftey door.
Behind that door, you would find a simmilar door straight ahead, and 2 normal sized but also metal fireproof doors. To the left was storage, ahead was a server room and a emergency exit, and to the right was that libary.
The liberay itself was about 6 on 6 meters, with metal free standing (yes, they were not bolted down) heavy weight shelfings along three of the walls, starting right beside the door which was in a corner of the room, and ending on the opposite of that.
In the middle of the room were 4 rows of each 2 of these shelfes side by side, basicly creating 4 little corridors. The shelfes were however double sided and thus double depth compared to the once on the wall, so that you would have a wall of books to your left and right if you entered one of these corridors.
To the left of the door were 2 normal sized work desks with 2 chairs each, a computer and some other stuff you need for the job like stamps etc.
Our job was to first integrate all the books in the new digital barcode based system, then to exchange and sort out all old books (the change from a 9 year "Gymnasium" to a 8 year one was just finished and not all books had been removed yet) while managing the typical start of the year job of giving out the new books.
Meanwhile, we also had to take care of new order, integrating new deliverys into our system and doing other customer service kind of stuff (recalling broken books, helping people who need special books, helping new students or teachers).
So, we were asigned to have a mayor part of the power over the books in our school, with a room nobody except us was allowed to enter without permission, all to our self.
Oh, and we had 2 weeks we were not required to attend our normal lessons so we could handle the yearly book switchover from grade to grade.
And we got lots of free sweets, coffee, cake and pizza.
As we grew more familiar with our jobs, and with the teachers overseeing us, we kind of took the overhand over our teachers and sometimes even our principal.
For example, instead of takeing back the now finished grades books from all students before the summer holidays and handing the new once out after the holidays (both procedures took about 3 weeks combined), we were abled to shift all the takeing back and giving out before the holidays, starting at the highest grade that left the school, takeing back the next lower grade books and directly handing out all the books we just took back, working our way down all grades.
That way we only had to integrate new books and hand out the new students books after the holidays, allowing us to still have 3 weeks of free time, but effectivley only working 2. And we only ever had a small stack of each book in our storage, so the room was way less cramped.
Further, we also had the power to decide whether someones book was acceptable or if its condition was to bad to continue using it. If the book was relativley new, the student then had to pay for it.
There was so much this room enabled us to do, it gave us power, made us immune to most any teach and any other student.
We were a seperate group of people that grew from 4 originally up to a friendship group of 10 from different grades.
We didn't have to work any hard work, we had additional holidays, our teachers and principal loved us, our fellow students didn't dare to attack us in any which way and we could thrive.
Just beautiful.
