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edenfallingI have now worked three days at the Commons office, and one day back at the Collegetown office. It has been... interesting?
Like, on Saturday I spent an hour-ish putting together two complementary procedure write-ups about how key pick-ups work -- one tenant-facing to go up on the website and get sent out as an email template in response to questions, and one office-internal that describes how we make the tenant-facing stuff happen. The former was mostly copypasting the Collegetown equivalent, which we have had posted on the website for LITERAL YEARS, and making the necessary tweaks to adapt it for downtown. The second took a little more thought, but still wasn't terribly complicated.
Apparently this alone has justified my pay raise, because Mom Boss has been trying to get the downtown staff to do something similar for, again, LITERAL YEARS and Company Owner was impressed by my work.
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Yeah, I think that gives a pretty representative example of the problems the downtown office is drowning in.
Did you know they don't even have a record of what keys belong to which apartments? How the flipping heck are they supposed to know if they've accidentally issued the wrong key to a new tenant if they don't have a list to check?! Mom Boss and I commiserated over that today, and we both assume that Maintenance must have something if only to keep track of key cuts, so we're going to try to get Maintenance's internal records and then I guess I will bash them into a useful format. (Admittedly, Collegetown's record could be better -- at the moment it's a bunch of printouts in a three-ring binder and I don't know where the original spreadsheet has gotten to (if I did know, I would have been updating it on the regular to account for lock changes -- these really only change the letter appended to a key number, ie #D-99 is replaced by #D-99A is replaced by #D-99B and so on, but still!) but at least we HAVE ONE.) Eventually I am going to get all the damn keys into FileMaker, but we start with baby steps, and that's a spreadsheet.
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Today I caught up on a bunch of Collegetown stuff, which was about 25% parking leases and sending information in response to parking inquiries; 20% dealing with NYSEG bullshit (because NYSEG still isn't reading electric meters inside buildings even if they're in dedicated meter rooms where they will never have contact with another human being, grrr argh); 15% phone calls; 15% tenants coming in to return keys, sign out keys, or return move-in inspection forms; 5% managing our ads; and 20% trying to get on top of all the miscellaneous other tasks. Despite staying half an hour late, I completely failed to scan, upload, and email the two new leases that Miss California had likewise run out of time to process on Saturday. *sigh* Ah well, so it goes. At least I get paid for my time?
Like, on Saturday I spent an hour-ish putting together two complementary procedure write-ups about how key pick-ups work -- one tenant-facing to go up on the website and get sent out as an email template in response to questions, and one office-internal that describes how we make the tenant-facing stuff happen. The former was mostly copypasting the Collegetown equivalent, which we have had posted on the website for LITERAL YEARS, and making the necessary tweaks to adapt it for downtown. The second took a little more thought, but still wasn't terribly complicated.
Apparently this alone has justified my pay raise, because Mom Boss has been trying to get the downtown staff to do something similar for, again, LITERAL YEARS and Company Owner was impressed by my work.
...
...
...
Yeah, I think that gives a pretty representative example of the problems the downtown office is drowning in.
Did you know they don't even have a record of what keys belong to which apartments? How the flipping heck are they supposed to know if they've accidentally issued the wrong key to a new tenant if they don't have a list to check?! Mom Boss and I commiserated over that today, and we both assume that Maintenance must have something if only to keep track of key cuts, so we're going to try to get Maintenance's internal records and then I guess I will bash them into a useful format. (Admittedly, Collegetown's record could be better -- at the moment it's a bunch of printouts in a three-ring binder and I don't know where the original spreadsheet has gotten to (if I did know, I would have been updating it on the regular to account for lock changes -- these really only change the letter appended to a key number, ie #D-99 is replaced by #D-99A is replaced by #D-99B and so on, but still!) but at least we HAVE ONE.) Eventually I am going to get all the damn keys into FileMaker, but we start with baby steps, and that's a spreadsheet.
...
Today I caught up on a bunch of Collegetown stuff, which was about 25% parking leases and sending information in response to parking inquiries; 20% dealing with NYSEG bullshit (because NYSEG still isn't reading electric meters inside buildings even if they're in dedicated meter rooms where they will never have contact with another human being, grrr argh); 15% phone calls; 15% tenants coming in to return keys, sign out keys, or return move-in inspection forms; 5% managing our ads; and 20% trying to get on top of all the miscellaneous other tasks. Despite staying half an hour late, I completely failed to scan, upload, and email the two new leases that Miss California had likewise run out of time to process on Saturday. *sigh* Ah well, so it goes. At least I get paid for my time?
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-28 11:40 pm (UTC)Real estate agents are special, although rental always tended to be less barking mad than sales. They're all gung ho for the big sell, but everything else is somebody else's problem. If they can get a good office manager to handle the boring non-sales stuff, it's golden. If not, you get the real estate seller who thought that rather than putting up listed properties on his company web site, his terrible fan fiction would be a better choice. Or the agents who are suprised to lose court cases because they were dead certain they didn't have to pay annoying things like payroll tax. Or when they go out of business think they are perfectly entitled to sell super expensive equipment that was under a rental lease agreement (this one is from my sister, who, in at least one case, placed a lien on the agent's personal home to recoup the debt).
You are what makes offices like these work. Great to hear that Mom Boss is appreciative.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-29 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-29 05:56 pm (UTC)I'm still combing through website photos and floor plans to see what most urgently needs fixing, converting Flash files to .pdf as I go. Once I'm done with that, I get to start combing through the photos in the Z-drive to see A) if they match the website and B) if floor plans exist for the apartments that currently don't have anything up on the website. *deeper sigh*
But I have a mini-fridge and some wastebaskets in the office now, so that's something! And I think I'm going to give myself a break from files by inspecting a newly turned-over apartment before the predicted afternoon thunderstorms appear.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-07-29 06:02 pm (UTC)Plus they try to do everything in Rent Manager, which is a very useful program in some respects but is really not cut out to handle certain other tasks no matter how you kludge it. *sigh*
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-01 08:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-05 03:39 pm (UTC)