Moving Rant

Whenever I tell people I'm moving to New York, they have one of three reactions:

1. "Oh my god, that's so cool! Congratulations!"
2. "Didn't you grow up in Florida? You're going to freeze!"
3. "Isn't New York sooo expensive?"

I've kind of got my standard answers for each of these reactions since I'm so used to getting them all the time ("Yes, it is very cool," "Yes, I'm going to freeze... but I'll buy cute boots and scarves so I think I'll be okay," and "Yes, it is expensive but that's why I worked all through college").  The third one is the one I get the most though, and I can't argue with it, New York is probably the most expensive city in the world.  But one thing I didn't realize until very recently was that moving anywhere is expensive! Sure, moving to New York is expensive because the cost of living is extremely high there, but the actual physical moving part is way more expensive than I could have ever imagined.

Let me preface this rant with saying that I have lived in the same townhouse all through college for this reason.  I hate moving.  I nest, I hang ridiculous amounts of shelves and picture frames, I paint my walls, and I have absurd amounts of clutter.  I haven't had to move in three years, and even then I didn't have much more than my clothes.  

On Wednesday, I'm moving to New York.  Not for a summer like I did last year... I'm really moving.  Over the last few weeks I've been packing up my entire life to move it up there with me and didn't really spend much time thinking about how it would all actually get there.  I had planned to drive up with a friend, but our schedules didn't work out, so now (two days before I'm supposed to leave Athens to go home for a few days) I'm stuck.  My options were to drive (mom vetoed that immediately, for safety reasons and the fact that then my car would be in the city), hire movers (wayyyy too last minute for that apparently) or ship everything.  So tomorrow I get to go to UPS with my 14 boxes/suitcases/bags I have packed and pay ungodly amounts of money to have it shipped directly to my apartment.  I just booked my flight, which was even more money, and had to get a health certificate for my cat to fly with me, so there's another $100.  Not to mention the money spent at Kinkos last week faxing and overnighting my lease, and so many more expenses coming my way.  In the end I know it will be all worth it when I'm settled into my apartment and I have it set up exactly how I want it, but right now this is the most frustrating thing I've ever dealt with.  Aaaaand *end rant*

Everyday Crises

Maybe it has to do with the crisis communication case studies I’ve looked at throughout my career as a PR major, but I’m a firm believer that any situation can be saved if it is handled appropriately. After two incidents this week, I’ve been thinking about how this can be applied to every day life, not just huge corporate disasters.

• First incident: I bartend downtown, and a few nights ago a friend left without paying his tab. Toward the end of the night I reminded him to pay it and he said he was coming right back… which he never did. Since we literally couldn’t close down the registers without having that tab paid, I called around 2 a.m. (when the bar closed) to see what was going on. He had already left downtown and had no recollection of even opening a tab. That’s fine, people get drunk and forget things, I get it. However, he proceeded to yell at me and call me mean names. I just assumed this was because he was drunk, but I got more angry texts the next day, accusing me of overreacting and blaming me for everything that had happened. Do I care if someone walks out on a tab? Not particularly. What bothered me was getting yelled at and blamed for something that wasn’t my fault.

• Second incident: Our neighbors asked if they could borrow our vacuum cleaner, which I of course agreed to (I should have known better when they followed the request with… “Ours is clogged and our floors are disgusting!”… but by then it was two late). They promised to bring it back as soon as they were done, but by the next afternoon we still had no vacuum cleaner. So I went over to see what was up and they ignored the doorbell. I could see all of their cars outside, not to mention hear them talking through the extremely thin walls of our duplex. After quite a few tries at the doorbell, some guy (that didn’t live there) finally came to the door looking confused so we just went in and took the vacuum cleaner back. Sure enough, when we tested it out it was broken. One of the girls ran over to explain (“we weren’t sure what to do, we were going to come over yesterday… but we never did”). Was I mad they had broken my $200 vacuum cleaner? Absolutely, but what I was more annoyed about was the fact that they apparently weren’t planning to do anything to fix the situation anytime soon. Had they come over as soon as it happened, explained, and apologized it would have been fine. 
  

Lessons in every day crisis communications: Take responsibility for your actions and apologize when you have done something wrong.

Aaaand that concludes my rant ☺