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edenfallingToday was my one day per week back in the Collegetown office, where I:
1. Sorted a lot of empty key-return envelopes for Aunt Boss, who is currently deep in the throes of key transfers for over 500 separate tenants, most of whom need three or four keys each. (We actually have more tenants than that, but renewals don't need their keys transferred, for obvious reasons.)
2. Answered some emails.
3. Ran a handful of minor errands, to wit: moved a currently not-in-Ithaca tenant's package from their building lobby into their apartment, unlocked some doors so one tenant could move their roommates' stuff into a specific bedroom, retrieved a misaddressed piece of mail to forward to a former tenant's current address, etc.
4. A bit of document scanning and filing.
5. Created a whole bunch of new tenants accounts in our system so they can make online payments through our tenant portal.
6. And NYSEG bullshit. So much NYSEG bullshit. I took photos of sixty-five electric meters, and sent in activation requests for all but twenty of them. (Aunt Boss pointed out that I can technically do NYSEG activation requests from downtown since I have access to our Gmail account and the shared office drive. I just can't take the photos when I'm not in Collegetown.) The problem is that I can't batch the requests. Each one is a separate email, and each email has to be manually completed with information from scanned PDFs. (Believe me, if we could get tenants to do all their NYSEG forms as searchable PDFs, we would. But that would be something like five times the logistical headache of me opening each PDF in turn and bitching about people's terrible handwriting.) Then I attach the new account application form to the email, plus a photo of the electric meter (the main reason this is taking so long compared to other years) and send it off.
For the people asking why we don't just make one big "hey please activate new accounts for all the attached forms, thanks!" email with either multiple attached forms or a single attachment with multiple pages, it's because NYSEG is a giant mess and that would result in us fighting them over account discrepancies for months. It is much simpler to be very clear and redundant at the start, so we do each account turn-on request individually.
7. Some discussion over how best to go about taking apartment videos for downtown. I suggested to... hmm, I need names for the other downtown staff... Ms. Rise-and-Shine? yeah, let's go with that. Anyway, I suggested to Ms. Rise-and-Shine that we buy a gimbal specifically to keep in the Commons office so I could shoot stabilized video footage each time I stage and photograph an apartment.
She said that Lawyer Man opposes that because he thinks virtual tours are more appealing when a tour guide is visible in the shots. She also wanted to know why I was having trouble getting hold of the downtown office's gimbal, to which I told her that Lawyer Man has apparently decided it's his new personal toy and takes it home with him every night and also insists on being the one to play cameraman for Mr. Geniality.
I said that if Lawyer Man really wanted a visible tour guide, maybe we could get me a selfie stick and I could do separate intro and outro segments with myself visible -- sort of "Today we're going to see Apartment X in Building Y" and then "And this has been Apartment X in Building Y. Please explore our channel and website for more information" type things -- to splice at either end of a video where I'd just be a faceless voiceover.
Ms. Rise-and-Shine was annoyed at Lawyer Man's actions, both because this is super inefficient and because it's a REALLY unproductive and expensive use of his time to be out shooting apartment videos instead of doing commercial rentals and, you know, legal stuff. Mom Boss also brought up the issue of what happens if/when the tour guide in a video doesn't work for our company anymore -- who has the rights to their likeness and voice? And also a video without a visible human in the shot can be projected on a screen in our office windows without looking weird the way talking heads with no sound often look weird.
I think the current plan is to buy a third gimbal so we have one for Collegetown residential (firmly under Aunt Boss and Miss California's control, where it should be), one for downtown residential (probably swapped between me and Mr. Geniality), and one for commercial, which can be Lawyer Man's baby and may help smooth the feathers we're going to ruffle by telling him (gently, politely) to stop being a giant roadblock. Ms. Rise-and-Shine may also bring her daughter-in-law in to do some temp videography and video editing, since she has some experience with that stuff and is currently at loose ends since her real job is teaching primary school. I mean, I'm sure I could learn basic video editing fairly quickly, but I don't currently have any relevant software and the whole point of this is to run efficiency rings around Lawyer Man, so yeah, let's use somebody who already has the relevant skills and equipment. *wry*
...
Mom Boss also plans to go over Lawyer Man's head and talk to Company Owner about how much faster and cheaper we'll be able to get video tours shot and posted if we do any combination of these new plans instead of letting Lawyer Man continue to hog the gimbal. Company Owner is big on doing things efficiently and inexpensively (aka fast and cheap *sigh*), so that should probably win us the day in some form.
...
I hate office politics.
...
Anyway, I'm going to bed now.
1. Sorted a lot of empty key-return envelopes for Aunt Boss, who is currently deep in the throes of key transfers for over 500 separate tenants, most of whom need three or four keys each. (We actually have more tenants than that, but renewals don't need their keys transferred, for obvious reasons.)
2. Answered some emails.
3. Ran a handful of minor errands, to wit: moved a currently not-in-Ithaca tenant's package from their building lobby into their apartment, unlocked some doors so one tenant could move their roommates' stuff into a specific bedroom, retrieved a misaddressed piece of mail to forward to a former tenant's current address, etc.
4. A bit of document scanning and filing.
5. Created a whole bunch of new tenants accounts in our system so they can make online payments through our tenant portal.
6. And NYSEG bullshit. So much NYSEG bullshit. I took photos of sixty-five electric meters, and sent in activation requests for all but twenty of them. (Aunt Boss pointed out that I can technically do NYSEG activation requests from downtown since I have access to our Gmail account and the shared office drive. I just can't take the photos when I'm not in Collegetown.) The problem is that I can't batch the requests. Each one is a separate email, and each email has to be manually completed with information from scanned PDFs. (Believe me, if we could get tenants to do all their NYSEG forms as searchable PDFs, we would. But that would be something like five times the logistical headache of me opening each PDF in turn and bitching about people's terrible handwriting.) Then I attach the new account application form to the email, plus a photo of the electric meter (the main reason this is taking so long compared to other years) and send it off.
For the people asking why we don't just make one big "hey please activate new accounts for all the attached forms, thanks!" email with either multiple attached forms or a single attachment with multiple pages, it's because NYSEG is a giant mess and that would result in us fighting them over account discrepancies for months. It is much simpler to be very clear and redundant at the start, so we do each account turn-on request individually.
7. Some discussion over how best to go about taking apartment videos for downtown. I suggested to... hmm, I need names for the other downtown staff... Ms. Rise-and-Shine? yeah, let's go with that. Anyway, I suggested to Ms. Rise-and-Shine that we buy a gimbal specifically to keep in the Commons office so I could shoot stabilized video footage each time I stage and photograph an apartment.
She said that Lawyer Man opposes that because he thinks virtual tours are more appealing when a tour guide is visible in the shots. She also wanted to know why I was having trouble getting hold of the downtown office's gimbal, to which I told her that Lawyer Man has apparently decided it's his new personal toy and takes it home with him every night and also insists on being the one to play cameraman for Mr. Geniality.
I said that if Lawyer Man really wanted a visible tour guide, maybe we could get me a selfie stick and I could do separate intro and outro segments with myself visible -- sort of "Today we're going to see Apartment X in Building Y" and then "And this has been Apartment X in Building Y. Please explore our channel and website for more information" type things -- to splice at either end of a video where I'd just be a faceless voiceover.
Ms. Rise-and-Shine was annoyed at Lawyer Man's actions, both because this is super inefficient and because it's a REALLY unproductive and expensive use of his time to be out shooting apartment videos instead of doing commercial rentals and, you know, legal stuff. Mom Boss also brought up the issue of what happens if/when the tour guide in a video doesn't work for our company anymore -- who has the rights to their likeness and voice? And also a video without a visible human in the shot can be projected on a screen in our office windows without looking weird the way talking heads with no sound often look weird.
I think the current plan is to buy a third gimbal so we have one for Collegetown residential (firmly under Aunt Boss and Miss California's control, where it should be), one for downtown residential (probably swapped between me and Mr. Geniality), and one for commercial, which can be Lawyer Man's baby and may help smooth the feathers we're going to ruffle by telling him (gently, politely) to stop being a giant roadblock. Ms. Rise-and-Shine may also bring her daughter-in-law in to do some temp videography and video editing, since she has some experience with that stuff and is currently at loose ends since her real job is teaching primary school. I mean, I'm sure I could learn basic video editing fairly quickly, but I don't currently have any relevant software and the whole point of this is to run efficiency rings around Lawyer Man, so yeah, let's use somebody who already has the relevant skills and equipment. *wry*
...
Mom Boss also plans to go over Lawyer Man's head and talk to Company Owner about how much faster and cheaper we'll be able to get video tours shot and posted if we do any combination of these new plans instead of letting Lawyer Man continue to hog the gimbal. Company Owner is big on doing things efficiently and inexpensively (aka fast and cheap *sigh*), so that should probably win us the day in some form.
...
I hate office politics.
...
Anyway, I'm going to bed now.
