How about you come up with a solution?

[evilhomer]

My client has a fixation, a fetish if you will, with having everything in the open; nothing can be in boxes. This is fine with large, stackable items, but when I've got over a thousand small, oddly shaped items, they have to be in a box, there's no other way. I do my best to appease her, she'll periodically come and check out the storage, and proceed to rant and rave about the stuff in boxes. I show her what's in them, explaining why they must be in boxes. She'll bitch and moan but will eventually move on.

But this time she saw something totally unacceptable. We have lock cylinders, 100-300 of them at any given time. Each one is individually numbered, with no more than 3 being the same number. I have to install these cylinders in the furniture I build and it has to be in a matching set of three. As such, I've divided them up into numbered envelopes inside a couple of boxes. A box on the shelf is bad enough, but a box with envelopes inside?!? "Am I trying to kill her?" (a direct quote from her reaction).

I explain the efficiency of doing it this way: Grab an envelope, have your set of three in 5 seconds. I explain the inefficiency of not doing it this way: throw 300 cylinders on the floor, spend the next 5 hours to 5 days sorting them out to find a set of three; repeat each time.

My explanation falls on deaf ears. The set up is unacceptable... Fine, you're the boss, whatever you say. So my uber-intelligent lord of all things cardboard, how do you propose I sort these so I don't spend half my life looking for a stinking set of three. That's not her problem, it's mine. I have to find a way.

I see no other way. The fact that I haven't put any thought into it may have something to do with that. I'm not about to wrack my brain trying to fix something that isn't broken. I'll just have the joy of getting torn a new one the next time she sees it. Customers suck.

[rvdammit]

How about some Really Useful Boxes?

http://www.reallyusefulproducts.co.uk/uk/index.htm

Just let her know the cost?

[karma_gypsy]

Goodness, gracious. Sounds like she's has a touch of the obssessive cumpulsive disorder. Some people with OCD are hard to live and work with...

[Shironu-Akaineko]

He wouldn't like the box recycler from that other thread...

[Reyneth]

Can you get clear plastic bags? Smaller than sandwich bags, a little more like what crafters use for beads - she can see in them but it keeps the sets of three together and separated.

Good luck, not sure I could deal with someone like that on a regular basis.

[MCSledgehammer]

I think you should hang them all from the ceiling in sets of three all over the room, like some kind of freaky surrealist art project/beaded curtain from hell. See if her opinion on boxes changes...

[Imogene]

*chuckles around the finger in her mouth, tries hard not to bite it off at Sledgehammer's suggestion*

[evilhomer]

Can you get clear plastic bags? Smaller than sandwich bags, a little more like what crafters use for beads - she can see in them but it keeps the sets of three together and separated.

Thanks, that was actually how I originally had them set out but it didn't work out because they shifted around too much and got out of sequence (a pain when I'm looking for a specific number or putting new ones away). Still a viable solution but not one that I'm keen on.

I like RVD's suggestion. Come up with a solution and a $5000 price tag on it. Stifle uncontrollable laughter watching her pick herself up off the floor.

Actually, something like this would work out and be relatively cheap.


But I think I'll go for the spider webs hanging from the ceiling first before submitting that one

[Geek King]

What about rubber bands? They would form a nice mini-pyramid and could be stacked.


Although I agree, what a Dingus this person is. God forbid you have a working process.

[Ackee]

*chuckles around the finger in her mouth, tries hard not to bite it off at Sledgehammer's suggestion*

Giggling too

[digilight]

Do you have access to a shrink wrap machine (Preferably with a heat gun instead of a tunnel). If so, just shrink wrap Queen Psychosis and hang her from a coat hook (that doesn't face the area where the parts are). Then leave your parts the way they are. Boom, she can't see them, she cant get back there to see them, it goes back to the old what they don't know won't hurt 'em...


*disclaimer, no bosses/customers where actually spindled/folded/or mutilated in the imagining of this concept. Since price would prohibit the purchase of a toy as fun as a person size shrink wrapper you will have to content with possibly giving her a shinny piece of metal inside of a number of boxes and letting her have a break down instead (this should provide at least minutes of entertainment).