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My client is a very nice lady. Always smiling, always cheerful, and genuine, not one of those ones smiling at you while typing a scathing email to the boss. So I like her, I have nothing bad to say about her personality. Her ability to do her job however..... 
Over the course of dozens of jobs, I have literally never had one that matches the scope of work that was arranged and quoted.
On this day we focus of safes. Whenever I hear "safes" I am always a little leery; I have seen safes be anything from multi thousand pound iron units that most people think of when they hear safe, to standard filing cabinets with additional locks, to locking screw down briefcase style that you can carry in one hand. This client is no different. We have moved safes from X-thousand pounds, down to 50 lb filing cabinet "safes". Due to the nature of her company, they have a number of safes that wind up being moved to different divisions. So when my workorder said it was a 400 lb safe, okay, not fun, but certainly doable.
This is the part where Mickey Mouse Moving MiM should have stepped in. As I said, this isn't the first "safe" that we have moved for her. This isn't the first time we've had a problem moving a safe because the weight was underestimated. So what do you do when you have a client that consistently gives incorrect information, thereby having you dispatch a unprepared crew. Do you
a) do some due diligence to verify the information and know that you are sending a prepared crew
or
b) decide that by the law of averages, she's going to be right one of these times, and this one feels like that one
Naturally it's option b
The reason why this is important is because for heavy safes, we rent safe jacks. I don't know why they don't just send safe jacks the moment they hear "safes", particularly with this client, but I suppose the reason for that is the same reason why they don't verify things in the first place.
As an added bonus, as soon as we get to site, on top of the add ons for the other work we are doing for her, she's added another safe to our list. We handle the first end of things, which of course included multiple add ons, then it's on to the safes. I see the first one and it's 2 foot wide and five feet tall; I give it a nudge to confirm that it is the real thing and it's clearly in the thousand(s) pound range. I let her know that there is not a chance in hell of this one getting done. She is clearly disappointed and asks if I'm sure. Did I stutter you friggin moron? Look at this f'n thing. I show her that I literally cannot even budge it, it absolutely needs safe jacks, period, end of story, no further questions. She reluctantly accepts reality but says that the other safe must be moved, they need it today. I'm still in "keep the customer satisfied" mode and I've still got it in my head that the other one only weighs 400 lbs. I'm confident with that weight because I regularly handle fireproof cabinet "safes" which are listed at 500+ lbs, and they never give me a problem. So I tell her that we can handle that one, just need to get the other dolly. (MMM sends us out with a fridge dolly which, while being the wrong equipment, is sufficient for "lighter" safes).
We strap it into the fridge dolly and all we have to do now it tilt it back. But that is not happening, this thing won't budge. I'm thinking it's just a leverage issue, so we push, drag, pray and do what we can to get it into a more open area. But even that is a no go, we cannot get this thing to tilt up. I'm pondering a couple of tricks but then something occurs to me. It's a rectangular shape, and we've got it on the wide end; even if we are able to tilt it up, we won't be able to get it through any doorways, we would have to tilt it on it's narrow end. At this point I call it. Simple physics means that this is roughly doubling the weight that we are trying to tilt, and it would be dangerously unstable on this wrong piece of equipment.
I call the client back to give her the news. Once again she is disappointed. She sees that we had managed to move it a little and wants us to drag it out the garage door then lift it on my truck's tailgate. This idiot with no apparent ability to count or otherwise ability to have a proper plan is, apparently, a move expert who knows exactly how everything should be done. You see, this is why this idiot asked for a truck with a tailgate so that we could do this because it was too far to walk it to the dock.
Okay, so for starters, by my judgement, this safe is above the weight limit for my tailgate. Even if I were to risk that, we could not safely transfer it off the tailgate into the truck. And even then, we would have to drag it over 1,000 yards across painted and tiled floors at the receiving end. She focuses on me saying that it's above the weight limit for my tailgate
SC: What's the weight limit for your tailgate?
Me: Honestly I don't know, but my judgement is that this unit is above that limit
SC: Well it's only 400 lbs.
Me: Where are you getting this number from?
SC: That's just the rough weight of a safe this size.
Me: Okay, well I regularly move cabinets listed on waybills at over 500 lbs and they don't give me this kind of trouble, I'm going to say that your 400 lb estimate is on the low side.
So basically, she just pulled this number out of her ass. I don't know, I didn't get this thing on a scale, for all I know it was accurate. But based on what I have done before and the numbers I have seen that go with it, I can't believe it was an accurate number. But really all she had to do was look at this thing and see that it's pretty heavy, better send safe jacks, just to be on the cautious side. But of course, that would mean actually knowing how to do her job, so that can't happen.
So we part ways to get the job done on another day. But before going, I make a request:
Me: So we'll get the safe jacks, we'll get this handled, but please, can you get these doors closed so that they can be safely moved without damaging them, I don't want a repeat of what we went through last year at Main Street
SC: No we can't do that, this is how safes are supposed to be moved
Me: (oh FFS!!! this again?!?) Okay, I think it's safer for them to be moved with the doors fully closed, I'll discuss the matter with my office
That was the end of this day, but it did bring back the memory of a war story of that safe I did last year for her, I'll share that story too.
Over the course of dozens of jobs, I have literally never had one that matches the scope of work that was arranged and quoted.On this day we focus of safes. Whenever I hear "safes" I am always a little leery; I have seen safes be anything from multi thousand pound iron units that most people think of when they hear safe, to standard filing cabinets with additional locks, to locking screw down briefcase style that you can carry in one hand. This client is no different. We have moved safes from X-thousand pounds, down to 50 lb filing cabinet "safes". Due to the nature of her company, they have a number of safes that wind up being moved to different divisions. So when my workorder said it was a 400 lb safe, okay, not fun, but certainly doable.
This is the part where Mickey Mouse Moving MiM should have stepped in. As I said, this isn't the first "safe" that we have moved for her. This isn't the first time we've had a problem moving a safe because the weight was underestimated. So what do you do when you have a client that consistently gives incorrect information, thereby having you dispatch a unprepared crew. Do you
a) do some due diligence to verify the information and know that you are sending a prepared crew
or
b) decide that by the law of averages, she's going to be right one of these times, and this one feels like that one
Naturally it's option b
The reason why this is important is because for heavy safes, we rent safe jacks. I don't know why they don't just send safe jacks the moment they hear "safes", particularly with this client, but I suppose the reason for that is the same reason why they don't verify things in the first place.
As an added bonus, as soon as we get to site, on top of the add ons for the other work we are doing for her, she's added another safe to our list. We handle the first end of things, which of course included multiple add ons, then it's on to the safes. I see the first one and it's 2 foot wide and five feet tall; I give it a nudge to confirm that it is the real thing and it's clearly in the thousand(s) pound range. I let her know that there is not a chance in hell of this one getting done. She is clearly disappointed and asks if I'm sure. Did I stutter you friggin moron? Look at this f'n thing. I show her that I literally cannot even budge it, it absolutely needs safe jacks, period, end of story, no further questions. She reluctantly accepts reality but says that the other safe must be moved, they need it today. I'm still in "keep the customer satisfied" mode and I've still got it in my head that the other one only weighs 400 lbs. I'm confident with that weight because I regularly handle fireproof cabinet "safes" which are listed at 500+ lbs, and they never give me a problem. So I tell her that we can handle that one, just need to get the other dolly. (MMM sends us out with a fridge dolly which, while being the wrong equipment, is sufficient for "lighter" safes).
We strap it into the fridge dolly and all we have to do now it tilt it back. But that is not happening, this thing won't budge. I'm thinking it's just a leverage issue, so we push, drag, pray and do what we can to get it into a more open area. But even that is a no go, we cannot get this thing to tilt up. I'm pondering a couple of tricks but then something occurs to me. It's a rectangular shape, and we've got it on the wide end; even if we are able to tilt it up, we won't be able to get it through any doorways, we would have to tilt it on it's narrow end. At this point I call it. Simple physics means that this is roughly doubling the weight that we are trying to tilt, and it would be dangerously unstable on this wrong piece of equipment.
I call the client back to give her the news. Once again she is disappointed. She sees that we had managed to move it a little and wants us to drag it out the garage door then lift it on my truck's tailgate. This idiot with no apparent ability to count or otherwise ability to have a proper plan is, apparently, a move expert who knows exactly how everything should be done. You see, this is why this idiot asked for a truck with a tailgate so that we could do this because it was too far to walk it to the dock.
Okay, so for starters, by my judgement, this safe is above the weight limit for my tailgate. Even if I were to risk that, we could not safely transfer it off the tailgate into the truck. And even then, we would have to drag it over 1,000 yards across painted and tiled floors at the receiving end. She focuses on me saying that it's above the weight limit for my tailgate
SC: What's the weight limit for your tailgate?
Me: Honestly I don't know, but my judgement is that this unit is above that limit
SC: Well it's only 400 lbs.
Me: Where are you getting this number from?
SC: That's just the rough weight of a safe this size.
Me: Okay, well I regularly move cabinets listed on waybills at over 500 lbs and they don't give me this kind of trouble, I'm going to say that your 400 lb estimate is on the low side.
So basically, she just pulled this number out of her ass. I don't know, I didn't get this thing on a scale, for all I know it was accurate. But based on what I have done before and the numbers I have seen that go with it, I can't believe it was an accurate number. But really all she had to do was look at this thing and see that it's pretty heavy, better send safe jacks, just to be on the cautious side. But of course, that would mean actually knowing how to do her job, so that can't happen.
So we part ways to get the job done on another day. But before going, I make a request:
Me: So we'll get the safe jacks, we'll get this handled, but please, can you get these doors closed so that they can be safely moved without damaging them, I don't want a repeat of what we went through last year at Main Street
SC: No we can't do that, this is how safes are supposed to be moved
Me: (oh FFS!!! this again?!?) Okay, I think it's safer for them to be moved with the doors fully closed, I'll discuss the matter with my office
That was the end of this day, but it did bring back the memory of a war story of that safe I did last year for her, I'll share that story too.
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