Just When We Thought We Had It Figured Out....

Well...seems that the couple who came to check out our site isn't going to take the job so the job has been offered to the couple I interviewed and chose. They will start January 5th...we'll train them for five days and then we are done here. Yay !! We've also been told that we should have some time off, once we finish here, so we want to head to Florida, see our friend Jan and get some work done on our rig before we get another assignment.

Our North Bergen location is really shorthanded so I've been asked to help them out this weekend. I will be going there tomorrow to work. It's about a 30 minute drive to get there so not too bad. I've been to the site before...it's huge....over 1000 units. I haven't worked there...just visited. They also want me to go there on Sunday but it will depend on whether Linda takes the car to go home on Sunday. Ordinarily I wouldn't mind driving Bertha (our second vehicle) to another site but we have a HUGE Nor'easter comin our way and they are calling for 8-12" of snow here. Supposed to start around 9 a.m. tomorrow and snow till Sunday morning, which is when Linda wants to head out for Pennsylvania. I won't try to drive Bertha in a snowstorm, especially when they say we might get 30-50 m.p.h. winds with whiteout conditions. Nope, not gonna do it....and it will probably prevent Linda from going home too for her family Christmas gathering. Tomorrow I will drive our 4 wheel drive car (the Xterra) and I'll be fine getting to North Bergen and back. You can be assured that this storm is something we'll be keeping our eye on. Linda will be working here tomorrow by herself so hopefully it will be a quiet day for her.

Hitting The Road Soon....

Today seemed to go by quickly at work. Since we got word yesterday of the sale of three other units near us, more info has come out about who will come here. I guess it's a good thing that my three months of interviewing didn't turn up anyone sooner cause we wouldn't be a viable location to transfer one of the displaced managers from the other units. One of the displaced couples came to our site this morning and looked around. We heard this afternoon that the woman will come here with her boyfriend and her husband (or soon to be ex) will go to another one of our sites needing a manager. Hmmm...strange outcome but hey, I guess it works for someone. So, I think that means that we will be done here in short order. No one has told us yet. Perhaps as of Saturday....maybe in another week. I suppose someone might tell us by the end of the week. If not, I'll ask since we'd like to know what is next for us.

We have several things that we need to get worked on in our rig and that takes time to set up and plan for. Since it's our home, it's not like you just drop it off and pick it up when the work is done...This time we'll make sure that whoever we take it to is familiar and willing to go through our extended service contract provider for the repairs. We aren't going to get ripped off like we did before with Settle's RV dealership, who wouldn't open a claim on our repairs and we ended up eating the whole cost of the repair. Nope, not this time. One of the things that needs to be worked on is an item that Settle's never addressed when we took our rig to them.

So we're finishing up odds and ends here...waiting to here when we ship out and if there is another pressing assignment. More to come....

Change Is In The Air....

Wow, funny how fast things can change. We've been plodding along, interviewing but not having any luck finding candidates and then when I have one, we get news that several of our NJ locations are being sold to another storage company this Friday. It is unknown whether the new company will keep our management or not. The one location being sold is Union, where the assistant manager that we hired and trained got hired for a full-time position there. Now, he's not sure if he has a job or not. We haven't filled his position yet although I have an interview scheduled tomorrow with a candidate. We'll know Friday whether he might be available to come back and work for us. That would be great for us ! I feel bad for the other managers....it would be really hard to sit and wait till Friday to find out what your fate is. It could be better for them than they have it now. The new company may pay them more to keep doing what they are currently doing...or they might not have a job. Hmmm....guess we'll find out on Friday. In the meantime, one of the couples that is in limbo is coming to look over our site tomorrow. Not sure how it's decided who gets to come here....whether the couple I picked is out of the running if another management team wants this position or if our corporate office has the final say. Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out but if another site's team comes here, we might be out of here come next week. Wouldn't that be nice but a little sooner than we thought. Stay tuned....

Saturday...

Warmer today...and the sun was out. Rain moving in tonight and supposed to keep up all day on Sunday. Temps the next couple of days will be in the 40's which will be a welcomed change from the arctic chill we've been under. Work was busy today...the phone rang non-stop for Linda and I finally got a chance to get the inside cleaning caught up (in the morning) before people started moving in and out throughout the day. Again today, as has happened several times now in the past week....I went to the second floor to discover discarded items just outside the elevator. Mind you...they are piled under the "No Dumping" sign. This put me in a really foul mood first thing and I was bound and determined to figure out who it was. Not only is it a pain in the butt to haul this stuff to the dumpster but the item this person left the other day was dang heavy. I had to drag it onto the elevator and it took two of us, with a mighty heave ho, to get it into the dumpster. It was a binding machine of some sort. And again today there was another binding sort of gizmo and a table sitting there when I stepped off the elevator. I was ticked....Well, since I hadn't had time to dust mop the hallway yet, I followed the trail of little paper punch outs that must have fallen out of this machine as he dragged it to its final resting spot. Aha, I got a unit number (as there was a pile of paper thingies outside the door of a unit. I went to the office and we looked to see if that tenant had entered the facility last night. Sure enough, he had. Each time someone punches their code into our gate access system, there is a log of who comes in and who leaves. We then looked at the other two days where we had been left "presents" (as Linda calls them). Yep, there it was on our gate report. The same person had been there all three times. Linda picked up the phone and left a message on their voicemail that they had till noon (it was now 9 a.m) to remove the items or they'd be charged $50 per item removed. Someone showed up in pretty short order as I made my rounds to the 2nd floor to finish my task of dustmopping and found the items gone. I wasn't going to remove the trail of evidence until the guy showed up (in case he disputed it)but since he clearly turned in a guilty verdict, I finished up cleaning the floor. A little while later he calls Linda and says he was in to pick up the items but the only reason he left the ones the other night was because the elevator wasn't working. Linda told him, "Yes, it was and besides we have two elevators. She said how did you get up there (meaning to the second floor) and he said, "Oh yeah". Then he said he didn't want to take the one item out with him cause it was really heavy. "No shit", she thought. We about busted a gut trying to pick it up to put in the dumpster. Anyway, after a chastising from her, he promised to never throw anything else away in our facility. Linda and I chalked it up to good detective work....Cagney and Lacey strike again !!

Bitter Cold....

We listened to the wind howl all night and awoke to no running water this morning. Temps were in the 30's but with 20-40 m.p.h. winds; it was mighty chilly. And of course at 1:00 a.m. we ran out of propane in the one tank and had to go out in the cold to change over to the other tank....Brrrrr.....So we went up to the vacant manager's apartment and showered this morning. Not a bad Plan B. Once I got our hose thawed out (took it in the office where it's nice and toasty), I filled up our fresh water tank so we can get through this cold snap. Supposed to warm up around Sunday....

Today we got a visit from the local law enforcement teams (sheriff, hazmat, etc.) to take their canine bomb sniffers through our facilities. One of the guys had stopped several weeks ago and said that he'd like to come by and have his dogs walk through to aid in their training. We said sure....so today was the day. We have 972 units but it didn't seem to take them long at all to walk the place. I think the whole team stood in the office talking and "preparing" longer than it took the dogs to "work". You'll be happy to know (as are we) that there are no bomb supplies in our unit. Whew, that is a load off our mind. We were hoping that the dogs had been dually trained in drug sniffing too but no cigar....only bombs.

Tis the season that we are thinking of our friends who are out in Coffeyville, Kansas at Amazon.com.....working their tales off for all the holiday shoppers out there. I'm sure they are all exhausted and I know they are counting the days till they will be done. From the e-mails we've been getting from them it sounds like alot of people have been shopping on-line....lots of orders coming in and going out of their facility. Hang tough all you Santa helpers in Coffeyville....not too much longer !

Tomorrow is our long day at work...Ugh !! Don't care for Saturdays as the day seems to drag since we go in an hour earlier (start at 7:45) and get out around 6:15. Makes for a long weary day..I'm off to bed so I'll be bright and ready for whatever the day has in store for us. TTFN

Drying Out....

We had a really drenching rain here Tuesday night late into Wednesday morning. Wow, did it make a mess. Apparently there are some areas around the windows that aren't "tight" as the water was streaming down the inside of the brick wall around the 3rd story windows. As if that wasn't a big enough issue to go into yesterday morning, I then found on the 3rd floor where someone had pulled the pin on a fire extinguisher and discharged the powder all over the place. That was an even bigger mess ! That fine dry chemical was up the fronts of doors on units, all over the floor for about a 30' section and then anyone who walked through it tracked it further down the hallway. Ick !! That took me a while to clean up and I would love to get my hands on the person that did it. The bright spot yesterday came when Steven showed up with our repaired circuit boards for the two entry gates that have been inoperable for the last two and half weeks. Now all three gates are working properly and the property is secure !! Now we can track everyone who enters the property and catch or eliminate those who try to vandalize things.

Today it is very windy, making the wind chill in the 20's....it is bone chilling ! We only worked two hours this morning to help out our assistant manager and then we took the rest of the day off so we don't get too many hours for this payroll period. Our assistant finishes up her classes on Saturday so we should be able to get back to a normal schedule of Sundays and Mondays off. The business also seems to be slowing down a little bit so we don't worry as much leaving her to work alone. We're only a phone call and step away from helping her, should she need it. These cold temps make my mind wander to warmer climates....like Florida. How nice it would be to get away and soak up the sun. We're hoping we might get time to do that after New Year's but it depends on when we finish up here. Our fingers are crossed !!

Ho Ho Ho....

Things are pretty much the same as it's been at work. We've been working everyday although yesterday and today we worked half days to try and keep our hours down. We got word of our next auction...Jan. 28 so just when things might slow down a little, they can't because we're in the next auction cycle. Linda got the certified letters out yesterday (after working on them Sunday)...next come the newspaper ads. By calling everyone on the lien list (45 of them, I believe)we got 4 of them to come in and pay before we needed to send them certified letters. That is a big help. I am really hoping we can be out of here before it's lock drilling time...UGH !!!

We're still trashing out units that didn't sell from the last two auctions. It never seems to stop but we've been making progress at it lately. I couldn't bring myself to throw the nicer items in the trash to fill up valuable landfill space so as I've pulled out big items I've been posting them on freecycle.org What a great resource this has been and Linda and I feel like Santa Claus doing it. People we've given items to have been so grateful and the items have been helping good people get items they need. But more than anything they aren't going to the landfill. I still have a couple of units to trash out;then once they're empty I can have the dumpster people bring a big roll off to take away the rest. It would be alot easier to deal with if there was a thrift shop or an agency in this area that would take items such as this but there isn't. We called a ton of places and no one takes items like this. Too bad cause we've given away entertainment centers, a leather sectional, a beautiful glass topped table and many other items that have found good homes in the area. I even found someone to take some salvage lumber that had been sitting in one of our units and would have taken up alot of space in a roll-off dumpster. Now it will become part of someone's home remodeling project. That makes sense for our environment and saves us money in landfill fees. We all win when we help each other.

TGIF....

Glad it's Friday although it really doesn't make much difference since we are down an assistant and Linda and I will be working pretty much 7 days a week until we find a new one. Several other units are in the same predicament. Not sure why it's so hard to find good employees in this part of New Jersey. Many young people are put off by the amount of paperwork that is needed with doing leases, etc. I'm hoping we can find another assistant like the one we just hired. He is awesome although he's now working at another unit. I've begun looking again for a new management team. I feel like we're getting close to finding someone. We're running the background on one couple but I'm going to keep interviewing in case it doesn't come back with good results.

It was a busy week. Seemed like this was the week for people losing their keys. I've had to drill out a lock almost every day this week. The one today was due to the death of a young man. According to his mother and sister he was murdered in Newark about two weeks ago. When she brought in the power of attorney, death certificate and other paper work to prove who she was, I noticed that her son's day of birth was the same as mine. Was kind of a weird feeling. Linda and I were surprised how calm the mother and sister are since this tragedy happened so recently. Even when I took them up to his unit and drilled out the lock, you would have thought it was Christmas day. When they opened the door there were all sorts of clothing items right there in the front. If that had been me, I would have lost it at the sight of my son's clothing. They seemed more interested in the flat screen TV and other stuff. Everyone processes things differently so perhaps they are still in shock and haven't come to grips with it yet.

Calling for a chance of some wet snow tomorrow. I went and bought a new broadcast spreader for the ice melt. Hoping I don't have to use it....Yuck ! I suppose I need to fire up the snowblower one of these days so I know how it works. I hope we get out of dodge before we get any significant amount.

Tomorrow is our early day...in at 8 a.m. Hope everyone has a great weekend !

Wild and Crazy Day......

Today the guy from our company who's second in command came in. We've been working hard the last two days to get everything spiffed up and "VP worthy". Was a lot of hoopla for a 15 minute visit. He left...I fixed our lunch and we were both breathing a sigh of relief when in walked another VP from our company. Unannouced, I might add...He stayed for about an hour and a half and we learned alot of great things from him that we didn't know before. This day long barrage of "review" was mentally draining. As if that wasn't enough....right before the last VP walked in Linda got a call from our newest assistant manager. He called to tell us he was quitting to take a job at our other location.

The manager at our Union location called two days ago and told us that both of her assistants quit via a text message and asked if either of our assistants would like to pick up some extra hours. We offered her Piotr (pronounced Peter)cause we knew he wanted some more hours and he has transportation to get there. He worked yesterday for her and she loved him ! So today the company offered him full-time at that location and we are now back to working seven days a week until we find and train another assistant manager.

So it was a challenging day. Now it's pouring rain outside and we're supposed to have 40-50 m.p.h winds tonight and possible thunderstorms around midnight. Holy Shazzam ! A suitable ending to a wild and crazy day.

Blues Brothers....

This is a picture postcard that we found at my mom's this weekend of my dad in Berlin in 1968. This is that trip I talked about in another post, where he went to Europe as part of a People to People tour dealing with agriculture. I asked my mom more about how dad heard of this trip and got to go. She said that some information came in the mail about it and dad was really interested in it but knew that with it happening in the middle of summer, it would conflict with getting the crops in and getting the haying done. She told him that if he wanted to go to do it....that she could get the field work done with all of us kids helping her. I asked her why she didn't go and why it was that dad loved to travel but that she never did much of it. She said she knew that they both couldn't go and she was willing to make the sacrifice so he could go. That really struck me as such a selfless thing to do for him. I know that this trip meant alot to him....he loved the experience.

And what a cool picture ! My dad is the one on the far right in the dark shades. He was 45 years old when he took this trip to Europe. He looks like he is having a ball. In the picture with him is Gershom Bunnell, of Meshoppen, PA on the left and Garner Mitchell, of Coudersport, PA in the middle.