Spring!

Weird times 2 - Thanks for nagging

      As noted in the previous post, we are going through the process of selling the company, and it's led to some weird situations. One such example is the grading permit for a site we recently built an expansion on. The building portion is open and operating, but the grading permit - particularly, the landscaping part of it - has not been finalized yet because, well, it's winter. It's very hard to prove to a county that yes, you did plant flowers in this spot when there's nothing there but bare dirt; they get a little suspicious and make you wait til things are blooming and demonstrably not dead. Unfortunately, our grading permit was set to expire in early April, and you have to submit a renewal request at least two weeks ahead of time. Part of my job as I-Dotter and T-Crosser is to put calendar reminders for my entire department when a permit is going to expire, so we have enough forewarning to decide if it needs renewal. 

     So two months ago before we knew about the potential company sale, I got the calendar reminder that the permit would expire. I don't actually go out to the construction sites, so I emailed my boss asking if we should renew. Silence. This is not terribly unusual, so I set a reminder for a week later. More silence. I set a reminder for three more days, silence; three more days, silence; you get the picture. By now, word of the sale had gotten around and I was very tempted to just kill the reminders and let whatever happens, happen... but that's not what my job is. So for three more weeks, I just copy/ pasted the "Do we need to renew this?" text into a new email and resent it to the boss every three days, figuring eventually, he'll get annoyed enough to give me a real answer. 

Weird times 1 - Open permits

      Our company is entertaining a purchase request - as in, selling the entire company to one of our competitors. Things have gotten a little odd as a result, because about 70% of the things that I and many of my coworkers do involve planning ahead for future projects or running reports on past numbers to anticipate how to change future numbers. With the understanding that we will likely not have to worry about that within the next month or two, it has left several people without much to do. Luckily for me, I suppose, my position as Paperwork and Executive Wrangler (not my official title) means that there is a whole tidal wave of other ducks that need wrangled in order for the sale to go through. One of my hats is I-Dotter and T-Crosser, and we have found literally decades of un-dotted and -crossed things that could heavily complicate the process. 

     One example that cropped up recently was that someone had applied for a sign permit at one of our sites back a few years ago but not closed it out. At first glance, this was not terribly out of the ordinary - our signage contractor has a habit of not finalizing permits, so we sent them a note to take care of it. After a bit, they replied that it was not them: they had called the county, who said it was a "cosmetic" permit, and gave the name of the person who'd applied. After some searching, we discovered it was a client who'd rented space from us at this location for all of one month, and whose internet presence revealed they are... a make-up artist.