Office moving day
Today was the chosen lucky day for our Emeraude Sales Office to move across town and into a fine location right on Hoan Kiem Lake. I had a lunch appointment with a client today and so at 1:00pm, the lucky time for the movers to arrive, I was at the office to lend a hand to the team.
A few men arrived, dirty, smelly, and without any packing materials. No boxes, bubble wrap, box cutters, nothing. The truck didn’t even arrive with them. They made a phone call and another guy came with some tape. And so they used what boxes we had and started to throw things together, place them outside of the office and right in the pathway of the fire exit and doorway where they would need to haul the larger items like our desks, couch, chairs, etc.
I watched as the one little guy, who like the others immediately took their shoes off once they started working, taped the hard drives together with the keyboard and mouse for each work station. Two computer screens were taped together and set outside the office.
When one worker started to take things downstairs and line the sidewalk, I had to yell for them to stop and actually made them take things back upstairs. The truck still hadn’t arrived and lining up the sidewalk with the office valuables is welcoming an unwanted street market!
The boys insisted that the computers would be carried by the individuals, but I insisted that they be wrapped up. And so finally a man on a motor bike arrived with about 8 boxes and 2 blankets. Still no bubble wrap.
When the truck finally did arrive, along with a few more colorful characters to help, I then tried to orchestrate the circus of idiots to load the truck properly with heavy and large items first, then helped to arrange boxes neatly in the truck. I had to object to them setting the safe on top of the computers.
I let Kurt welcome the trucks on the other side of the project, as our new office has too many windows, glass, tiles and freshly painted walls to worry about. I’m sure I would have had a heart attack watching them take the bulky desks up the spiral stairs and over the railing.
The office manager tried hard to get a good quote on the job, I suppose, and I learned that it only cost $130 for the cross-town move. She learned this was probably a job we could have paid a bit more for, as the headaches caused in a cost savings effort just wasn’t worth it!
On the Bright Side,
Shanna