Life of a Sysadmin

The occassional trials and tribulations of a jack of all tr ades sysadmin in a startup in Silicon Valley

April 2007

Loading docks, or How not to make an order for 500 lbs of stuff

The office manager (who sits in the cube next to me) recieved a call from the lobby. It was a truck driver saying he had a shipment that required a loading dock. It seems that our keyboard trays had shown up. And as they weighed nearly 500 pounds in total, I guess it is of no surprise that it was shipped as freight.

Tangent: To find these keyboard trays, I ordered five different keyboard trays (A few more options if you wish to see what else I looked at; 1 2 3). Four of those were returned. All that effort was to avoid paying $400/tray for the Herman Miller keyboard trays that match our cube system. It was worth it. We found a keyboard that was better than the Herman Miller one for almost a quarter of the cost.

So the lesson learned here is that when ordering 500lbs of stuff, make sure it is shipped via a method that does not require a loading dock if you don't have one.

[2007/04/22 | /random | permanent link]