Yesterday we got in our biggest of our ding & dent auction shipments. It contained 42 boxes. My UPS driver asks that I give him advance notice of these kinds of large deliveries so he can plan his route accordingly. He planned alright; he took the day off, leaving me with a surly driver who was fully aware of his hosing. His annoyance eventually wore off, and after a free Coke and a little banter, he was smiling. We've had a lot of UPS problems on this route, including a driver who refused to pick up packages. After getting him in trouble with his boss (one of my customers), he now drops my packages as he brings them into the store. He doesn't exactly throw them down, but he man handles them in this gray area between inattention and deliberate abuse. Now that I think of it, many of my game industry relationships are like that.
We weren't exactly prepared for the shipment. We were still cleaning the office and building shelves. The hardest part was throwing away perfectly good office stuff. Everything thrown away is an admission of a mistake, a waste of money, a reminder of my lack of past frugality. Some stuff was a sign of progress, like dumping the giant DLT tape drive. Our backups are all copied to Internet servers now. You have to put a positive spin on this, claiming progress and re-distribution of resources, much like all the companies closing down unprofitable divisions and letting go of valuable employees who just aren't part of the new vision. It's a time when it's acceptable to throw some babies out with the bathwater, if it's for the common good and for long term survival. So yeah, I threw away a ton of perfectly good stuff, including office supplies and store fixtures still in the original packaging. It was claim the space and move forward or get buried and distracted in a dozen eBay auctions, Craigslistings, and emails to other stores.
As for the shipment itself, we'll post a list later. It's clearly more than we can sell at the auction, but that's alright. We've got Dundracon in February, Conquest Sac in March and the rest can eventually go online. These additional venues, along with the permanent storage takes the pressure off us to dump this stuff for the sake of space, which is what often happens after an auction. It's also a mental "open for business" sign when it comes to acquiring more stuff.
