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Now might be the time to stop working from Home


paulears

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I've worked from home for ages, but one unfortunate side effect of the shut-down for me has been that all the gear I have that used to live happily in regular client's premises has kind of homed - and my house, my workshop and studios are full of flight cases and boxes. Even worse, we're selling my mum's house shortly as she passed away recently and her garage is full too!

 

I've found a very local office and store that has been empty for a while and the other tenant and the owner don't like the idea of it staying empty. I'm taking it on and should have it finalised in a few weeks. Rent is cheap, landlord seems a nice guy and the other tenant (an insurance broker) needs a key to my bit as that's where the meter cupboard is - I'm happy with this and means he'll keep an eye on it when I'm not around.

 

Looks like if you want some extra space, now is a good time to look around and see the bargains - they don't seem to advertise these places on line - but most agents have these on the books. The agent who I'm going through has nothing on line less than £450 a month, but he had two available for half that, and mine is a tiny bit less than that. Council have 100% rate relief, so the only cost is insurance, electricity and water - all metered.

 

Now could be a good time to expand a bit. Worth a look?

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Have you managed to get back to the pidgeon poo yet?

I've worked from home for ages, but one unfortunate side effect of the shut-down for me has been that all the gear I have that used to live happily in regular client's premises has kind of homed - and my house, my workshop and studios are full of flight cases and boxes. Even worse, we're selling my mum's house shortly as she passed away recently and her garage is full too!

 

I've found a very local office and store that has been empty for a while and the other tenant and the owner don't like the idea of it staying empty. I'm taking it on and should have it finalised in a few weeks. Rent is cheap, landlord seems a nice guy and the other tenant (an insurance broker) needs a key to my bit as that's where the meter cupboard is - I'm happy with this and means he'll keep an eye on it when I'm not around.

 

Looks like if you want some extra space, now is a good time to look around and see the bargains - they don't seem to advertise these places on line - but most agents have these on the books. The agent who I'm going through has nothing on line less than £450 a month, but he had two available for half that, and mine is a tiny bit less than that. Council have 100% rate relief, so the only cost is insurance, electricity and water - all metered.

 

Now could be a good time to expand a bit. Worth a look?

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No! And worse, on YouTube somebody just posted a video of yarmouth in lockdown including video footage from a drone that flies down the pier and the missing panel in the fly tower is clearly still there. I can only wonder what the mess is like now. Probably time to go and remove more gear once I can put it somewhere!
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You really should be prioritising going in and making the repair now - bird ingress is exponential and just leaving it a couple more weeks could easily result in twice the damage,

The PPE and working practices for dealing with bird debris are far in excess of the PPE required for Covid works so you're well past the "it's too dangerous and non essential" stage

 

t

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the only cost is insurance, electricity and water - all metered.

 

Factor in at least the equivalent of a day or two's time every year or so, which you will spend sorting out the inevitable metering/billing foul-ups from incompetent utility companies. (And they all seem to be incompetent, unfortunately)

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The cleaning will be to give the cleaners some buckets and marigolds and some disinfectant. Scrub till clean.

 

Pigeon droppings are apparently popular as fertiliser - maybe you should see if some local gardeners will take it away for free...

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Tom - I understand, but this simply won't happen. There are no members of staff who understand these kinds of things. You live in a world where your organisation really understand the legislation, the codes of practice and have systems that are tried and tested. Sadly, this is a very variable feature in the venues I work in. I'll use one that was demolished a few years ago as an example. If you don't know what mercury is, how do you dispose of it. Funny stuff, but after a few weeks it had gone - I suspect it went in a skip to landfill. Sheets of plasterboard, chipboard and funny grey hard stuff all simply dumped. Ancient tins of chemicals, and even boxes of theatrical maroons from the 60s - in the store cupboard one day, gone the next. I provided one venue with a copy of the yellow book. I pointed out a few things they really needed to do. Nobody understood it. They really believed it didn't apply to them, and that's the problem. So many theatres are not run by the big organisations with their policies, rules, handbooks and systems. I copied the handbook I spotted at the Plymouth Theatre Royal - thinking it would help one venue I visited regularly who do front of house terribly. The idea of briefings, reporting and training fell on deaf ears.

 

At my summer venue cleaning staff are mostly non-English speaking. In normal times, if I need something, I have to find a supervisor, explain to them, and they translate. Really nice people but their English is hello and goodbye, and the occasional thank you.

 

If it opens, then they'll see the mess, get the mops and disinfectant out and that will be it. No special procedures, just muck to be cleaned up. They do NOT clean above the ground, so poo in the grid, flys, roof space and other technical areas will be left. There is no way any form of thorough cleaning will be done - no chance at all. I'll clean my gear. Everything else will be left. When some engineering work took place in the grid, the owner went up to see what they were doing. The grid timber floor is not all over - lots of voids and no handrails or protection. I walked in one morning to find the cleaners with their hoovers in the grid. They'd been sent up to remove fifty years of dust!

 

This is the world I live in. Rated, carefully selected approved fixings will be nails, COSHH is about collecting the little slips of paper and keeping them, First aid at work courses offered to part-time staff who might all work on identical shifts. Fire safety courses for people who only work 9-5. They do have immovable rules about some things where perhaps the local authority has patiently explained - but then, because they misunderstood they waste a fortune on unnecessary things. Skips nowadays are priced on what you put in them. The most expensive is a skip you can put anything in, so you use those ones and assume everything IS everything. Recycling doesn't happen. You build a paint store and have a fan running to vent it 24/7, but it's for paint. Industrial solvents and other gassy products aren't paint, so can't be put in there - it doesn't say paint. If people don't understand, it doesn't work. people like me cannot convince them to change - they've been told so nothing changes.

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I also work in the real world (and a lot in the middle east) where most have a rather lax view of the importance of many H&S policies but bird poop dust is probably one I would stake my reputation on. Check out the UrbEx community - people who will happily climb cranes, canoe through abandoned sewers, spend hours climbing in and through long abandoned bingo / cinema buildings at the point of collapse and all without any sort of PPE; but also you'll notice that any time they are exploring anywhere there's likely to be a build up of bird poo out come the masks because of the high number of injuries and illness THAT COMMUNITY have experienced from it rather than from the more obvious dangers. It would be better for one or two controllable stage staff to go in fully masked up and survey / remove any major build ups whilst fixing the missing panel then allow the normal cleaners to bumble around at their leisure and create a very very significant risk of illness.
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Mark - Floor area 54 m2 slightly tapering over the 12m depth - so 6m wide at one point, 4 at the other end - with a ceiling height of 2.8m.

 

I've been in and measured a few things and I think I'm going to use some of it as studio space - rather than storage, and a few mails today to old clients suggests that there's a local demand for video work. I've got lights, sound and video, and some green screens and black drapes all in cases, so rather than just store it, I can use it. This might work out quite well, because with the space, I can do quite a bit of stuff I can't do at the moment.

 

I'm assuming that the summer theatre really is on thin ice now, so need another source of income. For the price of the storage, I could have an earner? As I have the kit, I may as well try using it.

 

I derailed my own topic here - which was entirely my fault, but back on topic - I don't know if anyone has also noticed shop rents are at a low level too - I wonder if anyone has considered diversifying into selling to our industry. I see lots of comments on Facebook about the financial situation many of the big boys are in, so maybe there's mileage in selling services and products this way?

 

I just can't see that many of my old clients will ride this out. At least all my outstanding invoices are now cleared, I understand this is not the case with some of my friends, who have quite large debts owed from bigger companies, with little hope of recovery as they simply have no income to pay bills with.

 

Anyone else looking for alternative sources of income?

 

Something else to think about if you have a few quid in the bank is look at ebay. There are lots of decent products going at the moment for very low prices - not pocket money prices, but I've just bought another video camera - and there are radio mics, cabled mics and recorders going for well below their normal value. Quite a few from hire companies who seem to be clearing stock. Now is a great time to delve through ebay for bargain quality kit.

 

I'm hopeful us small fry will get through this with better prospects for the future.

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Something else to think about if you have a few quid in the bank is look at ebay. There are lots of decent products going at the moment for very low prices - not pocket money prices, but I've just bought another video camera - and there are radio mics, cabled mics and recorders going for well below their normal value. Quite a few from hire companies who seem to be clearing stock. Now is a great time to delve through ebay for bargain quality kit.

 

Yeah I've noticed... not a good time for me to be retiring and selling up!

 

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Mark - Floor area 54 m2 slightly tapering over the 12m depth - so 6m wide at one point, 4 at the other end - with a ceiling height of 2.8m.

 

I've been in and measured a few things and I think I'm going to use some of it as studio space - rather than storage, and a few mails today to old clients suggests that there's a local demand for video work. I've got lights, sound and video, and some green screens and black drapes all in cases, so rather than just store it, I can use it. This might work out quite well, because with the space, I can do quite a bit of stuff I can't do at the moment.

 

I'm assuming that the summer theatre really is on thin ice now, so need another source of income. For the price of the storage, I could have an earner? As I have the kit, I may as well try using it.

 

I derailed my own topic here - which was entirely my fault, but back on topic - I don't know if anyone has also noticed shop rents are at a low level too - I wonder if anyone has considered diversifying into selling to our industry. I see lots of comments on Facebook about the financial situation many of the big boys are in, so maybe there's mileage in selling services and products this way?

 

I just can't see that many of my old clients will ride this out. At least all my outstanding invoices are now cleared, I understand this is not the case with some of my friends, who have quite large debts owed from bigger companies, with little hope of recovery as they simply have no income to pay bills with.

 

Anyone else looking for alternative sources of income?

 

Something else to think about if you have a few quid in the bank is look at ebay. There are lots of decent products going at the moment for very low prices - not pocket money prices, but I've just bought another video camera - and there are radio mics, cabled mics and recorders going for well below their normal value. Quite a few from hire companies who seem to be clearing stock. Now is a great time to delve through ebay for bargain quality kit.

 

I'm hopeful us small fry will get through this with better prospects for the future.

 

Wearing my day job hat, a lot of 'big conferences' are instead being delivered as online webinar style, during COVID this was often a speaker at home / work talking to a computer screen and the viewer seeing their ppt screen. There is a growing realisation that social distancing rules etc are here for a while so lots of conferences are instead likely to be 2-4 speakers in one location with either a proj screen, or green screening of their slides behind them available online for a small fee. There may be 2-4 of these locations around country to minimise travel.

 

 

Whilst some speakers may be from large university affiliated organisations who have the high speed internet and appropriate tech; lots will be from smaller locations or as pre-records, so I suspect that there will be a market for this kind of thing across many industries.

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Thanks Paul, I know that commercial property prices vary significantly across the country but it sounds like it's not too dissimilar to what I'm paying per m2. But my unit's totally full with no way of using it to generate income so it's a significant ongoing cost just to store kit that's not earning a penny.

 

My work has currently disappeared but I've got a decent cushion and am keeping the running costs as low as possible so I'm not concerned financially and the government help is being gratefully received. However I suspect it'll take quite a while to pick up again, and as the majority of my work is lighting for big private parties in marquees etc I'm not expecting any significant new bookings for that type of gig until next year as I don't foresee customers booking something like that until they've got the assurance that they'll be able to hold an event without distancing or any risk of it getting cancelled. So I'm looking to push the exterior lighting side of things.

 

There's plenty of old equipment I could sell but none of it was worth that much before CV19, and ebay prices have tumbled over the last few years so I'd more be doing it to free up space than for turnover. As for buying from ebay, well I'm trying to minimise that too!

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