Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Yay for Saving Money!
Boo for having to move things!
Once upon a time, our big client had spare conference rooms in their building that were not contiguous to the rest of their space and were seldom used. We started working for them, had no office yet, and so ended up renting a large hunk of spacious hallway plus two conference rooms, one of them containing a large conference table they gave us. A third, smaller, “landlocked” room was within our space, still used for storage by the big client.
After several months, we had a more temporary client, Marine Optical, for whom we were doing a substantial software project. So my partner and the guy he was working with from the other company could have a quiet place to work, we added that third room, increasing our rent $200 a month to $1001.50 (a buck a foot).
A few months later, my partner got a day job, that room gradually morphed primarily into space where we stored old computer stuff belonging to the big client, Marine Optical refused to pay us the last $20,000-odd when the work was complete enough for their staff to tweak and deploy and then went bankrupt (one of those business lessons you learn; all the signs of it pending were there), and we’ve been paying the extra $200 a month ever since. It always irks me because it was largely for the benefit of the company that stiffed us and my now former partner, and subsequently benefitted the landlord (ignoring distinctions like realty trusts) who was being paid for our use of it as much as it did us. Of course, my blood pressure goes up every time I think about that 20 grand stiffing, since essentially I absorbed the brunt of it and neither I nor the business have ever recovered. It’s also made me leary of the accrual method as applied to revenues.
But I digress.
The big client has decided to remodel. They use the entire third floor and part of the second floor. The third floor is reception, conference rooms, offices and cubicles. The second floor is offices and storage space. They are turning the second floor, which is the floor we’re on, into reception and conference space, leaving some storage and a couple offices that make sense to stay there. The third floor will be all offices and cubicles, except for the largest conference room. I’m impressed with the plan, as it makes a load of sense.
Seeing this, I detected a golden opportunity to ask them again (I did once before, right after it turned out renting it was a mistake) if they’d like that third room back for storage, or maybe our conference room back as additional conference space. It’s the chance I’d been waiting for.
This was the answer to their storage prayers. They’re more aggressively outsourcing file storage now, but there are things they have to keep in-house, and quarters would have been extremely tight.
I just have to move everything out of that room, into what has become rather cluttered quarters, though it’ll all work when some planned purging is done and things are organized better. I figured I had until the first, but they’d love to start moving stuff in this weekend.
Thus what I will be doing the most of for a couple days, maybe into Saturday. But damn, it’s worth the $200 a month. Woohoo!