Posted by Sam on June 17, 2009
I have this very large entry hall in my home, and when it was built we had a special outlet put right on the curve of the curved staircase so that we could plug in a large saltwater fish tank. That thing was a big fat pain, and I’m glad it went with the ex when we divorced.
But now I have this big empty space. I thought about putting a big fake plant there, but I’m debating whether to get a water wall fountain instead. You know, one of those indoor fountains that sits pretty flat against the wall and runs water straight down the wall of itself instead of spurting out a little spigot.
Has anyone had one of these in their home? Does it spray - even a little? Because it would sit right on the tile and the slightest bit of water might cause someone to slip. I’ve seen these wall water fountains in restaurants and hotels and stuff, but never in a smallish (well, larger than most) entryway. You can look at the St. Augustine model of Village Homes to see what I mean. Would I have to put a mat under it, just in case? I kind of hate to; I think it would take away from the Mediterranean look I’m after.
Technorati Tags: Village Homes, wall water fountains, water wall fountain
Posted by SceneR on May 16, 2009
Everything’s been going along smoothly. You’re on top of your bills. You’ve put a little bit of money into savings. Things seem okay. Then something goes wrong at home. The roof needs to be repaired or you find out that you have termites or a major appliance breaks down. Now what?
The first thing that you should do is to take a deep breath and figure out how you want to handle the problem. Determine if the problem needs to be repaired immediately, if it can be put off until a later date or if there is a temporary solution that could be put into place now until total repairs can be made.
If there needs to be an immediate resolution and there is no affordable temporary alternative then you may need to go into a bit of debt to deal with the problem. You can use payday loans, credit card cash advances or other forms of borrowing money to get the cash that you need to pay for the repairs. Repay these as soon as possible to get back on track with your budget.
If you’ve got a little bit of wiggle room then you can avoid going into debt at all. Implement your temporary solution or accept the problem for a short period of time. Start slashing spending and use the savings to create a pool of money to make the repairs. Then you can deal with the problem and move on. Home problems do come up but they don’t have to take you too far off of your savings path.
Technorati Tags: credit card, payday loans
Posted by SceneR on February 15, 2009
One of the most irritating things that I ever had to deal with when working as a receptionist for various types of businesses was the tendency of many customers and clients to overstep their boundaries in the waiting area. You would be shocked by how many customers just come right behind the desk of an office and start nosing around. Since most businesses keep fairly confidential stuff behind their front desks, this is clearly no place for customers to be.
In most cases, I found that it was fairly easy to keep customers in their place (on the other side of the desk) with just a simple exchange of words. Once you’ve told a client that he doesn’t belong back there, he feels a sense of shame and doesn’t try it again.
However, it’s not always ideal to have to repeatedly tell different customers that they need to get out from behind the desk. In some cases, I found it necessary to hang a sign in the area telling people to stay on their own side of the room. In a couple of rare cases I needed to get post and rope crowd control barriers to physically deter clients from going behind desks where private information was stored. Shocking, isn’t it?
Technorati Tags: crowd control barriers, post and rope
Posted by SceneR on June 30, 2008
One of the things that I learned during the years that I managed an office was that it’s important to make sure that tasks are delegated appropriately. I also learned that it’s important to make sure that you delegate tasks in an organized fashion so that no two staff members are doubling up on duties. Being organized in this way is what will keep the office running smoothly. Of course, no one ever told me this; it was something that I learned the hard way.
I was working in a fairly small office so I left a lot of the decision making up to the individual staff members on my team. At one point, we had a project that required us to cut a bunch of papers into different sizes and then to fold them for mailing to potential clients. I mentioned in a meeting that someone would need to purchase the right tools to get this job done. I wasn’t clear about who this should be or what should be purchased.
Several different staff members went into the petty cash drawer that week. By the end of the project, the office owned a business card cutter, two paper cutters and a paper folder. We didn’t need all of these things. It was a waste of time for staff to go out and buy them and it was a waste of money spent on unnecessary equipment. But it did make me learn my lesson!
Technorati Tags: business card cutter, paper cutters, paper folder
Posted by TheScene on June 24, 2008
Reading product reviews for me is like having a crystal ball into the future - they let me know what to expect from a product. I tend to rely on them quite a bit when I am in the market to buy, so when I was in the market for a new office shredder, it came as no surprise that I would see what reviews I could dig up.
I don’t know if it was just me, but when I did do a search for paper shredder reviews, I didn’t come up with much. The few reviews that I did read seemed to lack the impartiality that I was looking for, so I decided that I would just do some myself.
I picked up one Destroyit shredder and a couple Dahle paper shredders that were of similar price to see what we thought. They both had a return policy that would allow for such testing and I made sure to ask the companies that I bought them from if their return policy would allow me to return them if I was not satisfied with their product.
The testing methodology that we used was to shred the similar amount of waste paper in each one to see how much waste was left. I guess it would be obvious that we would get the same weight out, but I wanted to see how fine the shredded paper that came out of the machine would be.
We will be testing the shredders over the next couple of weeks. We will be also looking for a place where we can recycle shredded paper - it seems to be the responsible thing to do.
Technorati Tags: Dahle paper shredders, Destroyit shredder, office shredder
Posted by SceneR on June 23, 2008
I had spent a number of years working in the office setting so it seemed natural to me to say yes when I was asked to move into a position as the manager of an office. I figured that this would allow me to get higher pay for the type of work that I was already doing. I had no idea what I was getting myself into!
I quickly learned that the office manager handles a great variety more tasks than the typical office staff member will handle. Additional duties for the office manager including handling issues with other staff, delegating tasks, taking responsibility for purchasing and servicing business equipment and acting as a liaison between office staff and head people at the office.
I hadn’t realized that so much of the job of an office manager would be to deal with the people who worked in the office. I didn’t mind the other parts of the job so much. For example, placing orders for office equipment was no big deal to me. But dealing with the headaches of unhappy staff members and trying to make sure that everyone else was doing their jobs was just too much for me. It wasn’t too long before I stepped down and started doing just my old job again!