News, Events, Thoughts, Finds, and Misc ramblings from the May camp.

Close Call

Feb 12th 10 Author Jackie | Category Business, May, Observations
| Comments 1 »

brick

What was expected to be an average Friday workday turned into an exhilarating real-life episode of CSI this morning at May HQ. Garth pulled up to the office to what could have been doomsday – a brick through the front window, as well as the front window of the unit next to ours.
With thousands of dollars of computer equipment, drawers full of irreplaceable client files, and racks of inventory (RedisWhite) we were immediately relieved to see everything intact and our office untouched. The “locksmith” next to us however, didn’t get away so lucky.
After racking our brains why they wouldn’t care to touch our valuables, we starting sleuthing around, putting together the pieces, and discovered the remnants of pot plants and (what we thought was) dog food in the back alley. Ah ha! Evidently the bandits knew exactly what they were after, and mistook our office unit (with no signage out front) for the underground growing operation next door. That explained why our neighbors never actually appeared to be doing any real work (he claimed to have won the business in a high stakes poker game), and why they’d sometimes leave their barking american bulldog there for long periods at a time. Mystery solved.

What was expected to be an average Friday workday turned into an exhilarating real-life episode of CSI this morning at May HQ. Garth pulled up to the office to what could have been doomsday – a brick through the front window, as well as the front window of the unit next to ours.

With thousands of dollars of computer equipment, drawers full of irreplaceable client files, and racks of inventory (RedisWhite) we were immediately relieved to see everything intact and our office untouched. The “locksmith” next to us however, didn’t get away so lucky.

After racking our brains why they wouldn’t care to touch our valuables, we starting sleuthing around, putting together the pieces, and discovered the remnants of pot plants and (what we thought was) dog food in the back alley. Ah ha! Evidently the bandits knew exactly what they were after, and mistook our office unit (with no signage out front) for the underground growing operation next door. That explained why our neighbors never actually appeared to be doing any real work (he claimed to have won the business in a high stakes poker game), and why they’d sometimes leave their barking american bulldog there for long periods at a time. Mystery solved.

alley-pot

Given the opportunity to reflect back, we are extremely blessed that we can continue on with business as usual. However, a couple huge lessons learned: 1) Backup all your files off-site immediately. Services like Mozy, Carbonite, and Dropbox are great places to store your files. Google Docs now lets you upload any files to their servers for free. Most project management tools like Basecamp and Intervals also support online document storage. There really is no excuse to not backup. 2) Insure your property and equipment. If you work from home, make sure your homeowners insurance is enough to cover any loss. If it seems like you can’t afford insurance, then you REALLY can’t afford for your equipment to get jacked, so just do it. 3) Finally, get to know your neighbors. Your livelihood may depend on it.

One last positive – we now have a really cool brick paper weight as a reminder of today’s events.

One Comment on “Close Call”

  1. 1 Dustin said at 5:56 pm on February 13th, 2010:

    Wow, what a trip. Glad you guys didn’t lose anything from that lol. I can’t help but point out the ADT sticker though, were they not alerted to the brick going through the window?

Share