All Things Great & Small
Recently the company I work for relocated their premises, from a spacious DOUBLE storey corner lot to a semi Victorian style, SINGLE upper floor office. I say Victorian because it’s long and narrow; I say semi because it’s minus the high ceiling. Adjusting to the space difference has been an interesting experience to say the least.
As some of you might know, the entire process of moving is a circus in itself. First you have to inform everyone of the change. Then you have to pack up your things; from the huge 5 tonne safe box to the tables and chairs to the smallest paperclips, everything had to be packed into boxes, sealed and labelled correctly for easy identification. Then you load everything into a truck (or seven) and then it’s off to the see the Wizard of Oz. Well not quite but you do trundle along to the new premises. Then its unloading time. Everything comes out of the boxes, is arranged as it was and voila, Bob’s your uncle – new office! You move in and life goes on. Simple ain’t it?
Well simple can kiss my Uncle Bob’s arse!
It’s been one ordeal after another:
- From the very beginning we had problems with the renovations – the ceiling collapsed in after we took down a wall. Then there was the relocation of the bathroom and the kitchen sink; partitioning the walls; levelling of the floor; installation of new doors; fitting in new shelving and windows; blocking out the previous paint job (which was a yummy combination of red, orange and yellow) and the re-wiring of the electricals. I’m just thankful no one died!
- Then there was a typo error in the notices we sent out (granted I was the culprit but what the hey, I’m human) informing our customers and suppliers of the change of address and phone numbers. Normally that’s not such a big deal, except for the fact that we only noticed AS WE WERE LEAVING to the new place. So it was back to the fax machine (in the empty old office with no tables and chairs) to re-send the notices again, this time with the I’M SORRY WE FUCKED UP note attached to the correct new address and telephone numbers. Sigh.
- Packing an office with about 7 years of files and papers that needed to be re-sorted and re-arranged, along with hardware and supplies that needed to be sorted, packed in bubble wrap, catalogued AND sent to our overseas office is of epic proportions! And I haven’t even started on our respective tables, computers, fax machines, telephones, knick-knacks, bric-a-brac, odds and ends, bits and pieces and all the other whatnots. I’ve inhaled so much paper dust from constructing and filling AND extracting and collapsing the cardboard boxes, I think I have enough pulp in my boogers to make a refrigerator carton box all by myself. Yum.
- The new upper floor office is about one and a half times smaller than our double storey corner lot and fitting what used to have its own space is now a massive exercise in space management. Its like that Bricks game where you arrange the different shaped blocks – except that we have to use tables, chairs, filing cabinets, and all the like, BUT these bricks don’t vanish when you get them all in a straight line!
- Then we move onto sorting out the telephone lines, fax lines, setting up the PCs and the wireless, gently reminding people (again) that we’ve moved, the feng shui ceremony to ‘warm-up’ the office, scrambling to re-locate files and records that were previously somewhere else…
Yeah the list goes on and on and on. I’m still trying to get into the groove of the new routine but the bonus right now for me is: work that previously used to be a 30 minute drive from my house is now a glorious 2 minutes walk.
Two enthusiastic thumbs up for not needing to refuel my car (at the current fuel prices, that’s a MASSIVE bonus) so often, not needing to fight for a parking spot, not needing to take the freeway and pay the ever increasing toll fees, not needing to face the morning & evening ‘rush hour’ traffic everyday and the BIGGEST bonus of ‘em all – I get to sleep in for another 45 minutes every morning!
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
