The Post-Pandemic Era has Come with Many Challenges, many Benefits as Well.
Almost everything in life has a good side and a bad side. That has certainly been the case for many business activities in this post-pandemic environment. It was three years ago that I acquired property on the south side of my business in order to expand customer parking.
In order to begin my project, I needed help from the telephone company in relocating and replacing a 1959 telephone pole that the contractors felt would not holdup to the activity around it. In addition to its questionable sturdiness to withstand the heavy-equipment vibration and surrounding ground-breaking, the pole was right in the way.
I spoke to the engineer with the telephone company about moving the pole 20 feet and upgrading it, as it was way past end-of-life. The engineer promised to get back to me. As time went by, I found myself questioning whether I needed to expand parking at all. The employee parking lot in the rear of the building is more than adequate for staff.
You see, one of the things that changed in my business as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, was the fact that my clients learned that they actually enjoyed filing their taxes remotely. Not coming into the office. Time drifted by without my hearing from the engineer.
Out of the blue, my client contacted me about my project. He wanted to come start site preparation. I went to the phone company to talk to the engineer again. It turned out he was on vacation. When his stand-in came out and took a look at the old pole, he said that there had been a misunderstanding previously about which particular pole I was talking about.
Once they realized it was the 1959 pole, they came out and remedied my problem within 4 days! To think, this long delay had been created by a miscommunication.