I've Never Been In This Situation Before

Since August of 1993, my business has been located on the second floor of what used to be a movie theatre - Richard Arliss's and Ken Murray's autographs still can be seen on concrete pavers near the front door. It's been a good building for us....nice neighbors, in the center of town (meaning near coffee and cookies), and a great landlord. Even Islay the Scotty who works as our Director of Security knows the way from the parking lot to the office door without thinking.

On Monday night, everything changed. I got a call from the landlord's daughter (he being out of the country just now); she said that one corner of the building had begun to collapse, probably because of some earth moving in the adjacent lot as part of building a new restaurant. In addition, cracks had appeared in the west wall.

The city had evacuated the building, padlocked all the doors, and put barricades everywhere possible, awaiting the recommendations of an engineer. He started Tuesday morning, and the plan was agreed to yesterday, so as I write this, the company shoring up the building is at work. Later today, perhaps, we'll be told whether we shall be granted "access," which means get your stuff out of the building and find another location, or we'll be entitled to "occupancy,' which means we can resume business as we had been doing it.

No matter what the outcome, I have learned a lot these last two days. The good news is that we have backed up our accounting files off-site, and they are current. Because much of our work is of the custom variety, that is done by the baton maker with whom we work from his shop, so that part of the business is OK.

The bad news is that we can't get to our computers, the checkbook, and the credit card processing machine. When I saw the building I implemented a back-up plan that I probably should have developed years ago. I have our name on some nearby space, I've figured out what we need to do with our phone calls, incoming orders,and I've stopped the mail.

A decision I am still unsure of is that I described our situation at the top of the web-site's home page. I'm not sure customers need to know all this, but since we're hamstrung for a few days, I thought they were entitled to know that. We're still receiving orders, so maybe my decision has been OK.

What I do appreciate, more than I might ever have known is that as an internet business, I have always operated from multiple locations - my home, internet cafés in the United Kingdom, my iPhone, and so on.

So the business has always had some redundancy...but for the moment not quite as much as I might like.

So keep a couple of company checks at home, make sure you have back-ups somewhere other than your office, and - if you have a moment - wish us luck. Right now, we could use a little.