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We have a big move coming up for a large company. They have 8 floors with about 60 private offices and 36 workstations per floor. Just to give you a flavour of this client, he expects this many people to be moved in a single weekend. But that's a headache for next year when the move rolls around. Right now, they want us to do an inventory of all the furniture in their space so they can decide what they will be doing with it. The decision will range from keeping it all, to keeping selected pieces, to disposing it all and buying new. The move is six months away but the guy is obviously clueless because he isn't aware that for an order of this size, it can take over six months just to get the product produced, to say nothing of the 2 to 8 weeks that will be required to deliver and install said product. But again, I'm off topic, the task at hand is the inventory.
So they've given us some forms to fill out. They are completely done up wrong, too many fields for one thing, not enough fields for another, missing items, just overall bad. But whatever, not the first time I've dealt with crappy material, won't be the last, we get a game plan and go.
So this is an inventory, a complete listing of merchandise or stock on hand, all we need to do is count them. So that's what we do on our first floor. Only to find out that they need an office by office inventory done. I suppose I should have figured this out considering that they gave us 500 copies of the office form, but it would have been nice to have this explained beforehand. But whatever, the offices are easy, and it takes a lot of writing but they get done.
Now we get into the open areas where they have random cabinets and panel systems furniture. They want a listing of all the workstation components, panels, surfaces, brackets, etc. Okay, no problem. The only issue is that they have multiple different systems all over their floors. I have no instructions of how they expect things to be done, so I make a list of the floor totals for each different system. I submit the forms and I'm told that they need to know where these parts are. Okay, this one that says the 19th floor, this is all the parts on the 19th floor. Yeah, but where? It's everywhere, you have 1 here, three stations over, there's another one, over on the other side of the floor there's 2 more. Well this isn't good enough. They have to know the location of these parts. Well fine, I need some kind of direction as to how you expect me to break down and identify the locations. Nobody can answer that for me so they will see if they can work with what I gave them.
I do not understand the importance of the location of the items. These are the parts you have, crunch the numbers and make something new work for you. Maybe if they could explain the importance of the location, I could comprehend their needs better and come up with a solution, but they won't explain things. Okay, then break it down for me, you give me a location and I'll fill out the forms for how you lay them out. No, it's up to me to break it up properly. Fine, this is what you get, if you don't like it, that's not my problem.
So they've given us some forms to fill out. They are completely done up wrong, too many fields for one thing, not enough fields for another, missing items, just overall bad. But whatever, not the first time I've dealt with crappy material, won't be the last, we get a game plan and go.
So this is an inventory, a complete listing of merchandise or stock on hand, all we need to do is count them. So that's what we do on our first floor. Only to find out that they need an office by office inventory done. I suppose I should have figured this out considering that they gave us 500 copies of the office form, but it would have been nice to have this explained beforehand. But whatever, the offices are easy, and it takes a lot of writing but they get done.
Now we get into the open areas where they have random cabinets and panel systems furniture. They want a listing of all the workstation components, panels, surfaces, brackets, etc. Okay, no problem. The only issue is that they have multiple different systems all over their floors. I have no instructions of how they expect things to be done, so I make a list of the floor totals for each different system. I submit the forms and I'm told that they need to know where these parts are. Okay, this one that says the 19th floor, this is all the parts on the 19th floor. Yeah, but where? It's everywhere, you have 1 here, three stations over, there's another one, over on the other side of the floor there's 2 more. Well this isn't good enough. They have to know the location of these parts. Well fine, I need some kind of direction as to how you expect me to break down and identify the locations. Nobody can answer that for me so they will see if they can work with what I gave them.
I do not understand the importance of the location of the items. These are the parts you have, crunch the numbers and make something new work for you. Maybe if they could explain the importance of the location, I could comprehend their needs better and come up with a solution, but they won't explain things. Okay, then break it down for me, you give me a location and I'll fill out the forms for how you lay them out. No, it's up to me to break it up properly. Fine, this is what you get, if you don't like it, that's not my problem.
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