As Hard as You Try, You Can’t Teach Calculus to a Squirrel

 

As we thankfully put 2020 in our rear-view mirrors, I went back reviewed the quantity of webinars and articles we put forth in this very atypical year and I was at the same time both heartened and dismayed.

Heartened by the fact that our production bordered on prodigious, with nearly 30 CPE presentations including those at many of the major industry conferences and more than a half-dozen articles for the top accounting publications.

Dismayed by the fact that as hard as we tried this year, some people just do not get it when it comes to succession planning – and likely won’t. Ever.

Of the hundreds of PowerPoint slides and thousands of words, there was not one session or article that encouraged succession procrastination – not one. Yet on more than one occasion over the course of this year it sometimes felt like I was presenting a calculus syllabus to a squirrel. And sadly, with the same results.

Case in point.

I was working with a firm in the Northeast. The firm had two partners, ages 76 and 69. That enough was cause for concern, amplified by the fact that each wanted to work five more years. I tried to imbue them with the realities of the current marketplace that very few firms would be flexible about a timeline like that. Then, also among their list of demands was a sizeable down payment. Another no-no in this climate.

Don’t Make Me Stop This Car…

It what seems like a lifetime ago, our family piled into a cherry red 1961 Rambler American and embarked on a summer road trip to scenic Cape Cod. During the four-hour drive, my brother and I like typical 8-and 6-year-olds, became bored playing the usual driving games like spotting out of state license plates and began an impromptu wrestling match in the back seat – an act that drew dire warnings from my father who threatened to stop the car on at least three occasions in the middle of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Once there, we unpacked and headed out to lunch. This is where unanimity went out like the Cape Cod tide. Since we’re in prime seafood country, my parents pulled alongside an oceanfront fish house. At that age, the thought of fried flounder or baked clams took a far back seat to a burger and hot dogs and we let them know in no uncertain terms of our menu preferences. Sadly, our voting and monetary leverage on the matter was as close to zero as possible and we were forced to settle for fish sticks and an oversized bowl of clam chowder.

I was too young at that point to realize the importance of everyone being on the same page, a concept I learned, often painfully, as I got older. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how many CPA firms overlook that critical consensus – particularly when contemplating a merger.

Jingle Bells… Costco Sells….and Sells…and Sells….

 

The other day, I received my copy of Costco Connection, the monthly print publication of the giant big box retailer of which our family has been a member for nearly 20 years.

At Chez Carlino, the holidays represent our largest (i.e., read: most expensive) visit to the venue as we stock up for the traditional Christmas bacchanal, which in scope, would most likely even prompt the entire offensive line of the New York Giants to scramble for the antacid after dessert. For this visit we take the SUV and put down the back seats to accommodate the haul.

From paper goods to flat screen TVs to a grocery and meat department big enough to amply service a cruise ship, the 800-unit international brand unlike competitors like Wal-Mart, does no advertising behind its regular coupon mailings, among other interesting facets of its operation.

I recently came across an article that detailed some of Costco’s more unique features, notwithstanding the fact it sells more than 1 billion rolls of toilet paper a year and generates in excess of $160 billion in revenue.

Its global popularity reaches markets far beyond New York or California. When it cut the ribbon on its first unit in China it had to shut down temporarily because nearly 10,000 shoppers tried to sardine their way in on opening day.

Student Loan Forgiveness – the Next Subprime Debacle

In 1979, I was earning a modest $11,000 a year at one of those tedious entry level jobs that some of us manage to get literally hours out of college. All was going smoothly as could be expected for a first timer in the workforce until roughly six months later when I received my first invoice for my student loans.

Between rent, a car and a new work wardrobe, $11,000 goes only so far and the thought of another expense slicing an already thin pie even smaller, I spent a lot of time trying to determine where I could cut costs.

It took four years but somehow, I managed to pay them all off.

Fast forward 40 years.

Student loan debt in the U.S. has now morphed into a $1.6 trillion dollar behemoth with 30 percent or more of borrowers defaulting on loans. To put that dollar figure in perspective, it is about 10 times larger than the Savings & Loan crisis of the 1980s.

Now there are myriad reasons for this – a steep decline in government investment in colleges, the explosion of online learning and last but not least, individual choices of students who eschew more tuition reasonable state schools or community colleges in lieu of far pricier private colleges. Compounding that dubious choice of higher learning institutions many graduates with what I like to civilly refer to as “toilet paper” degrees. Meaning that in the real world, they’re good for little else.

CPAs and Selling – Not Always a Perfect Match

                                                                     

In one of the classic scenes of the 70s sitcom “Happy Days,” Richie Cunningham is on a dating dry spell and his self-confidence is hovering at an all-time low. He enlists his pal and womanizer Fonzie for help to jump-start his love life but to no avail. When Fonzie instructs him to approach a pretty girl in a booth at the local greasy spoon, he responds with an opening line of “You don’t want to go out with me do you?”

Some folks are simply not salespeople – whether selling themselves or services. Throughout my career I have met more than a few of what I would call “platinum-level” salespeople. During a  brief job tenure at a health club chain many years ago, the head of sales was a sultry, turquoise-eyed redhead named Joan, who literally could market a lifetime membership to the folks starring in the reality show “my 600-pound life.”

With a husky voice reminiscent of a prime Lauren Bacall and the body of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, she had most drooling male members signing on the dotted line within minutes. And truth be told, she was equally effective with potential female members as well. It was no surprise she easily led the company in sales year after year.

Ditto for a salesman at a local car dealership. While my wife and I waited “on deck” to be waited on, I watched as he not only closed a deal in minutes but got a young couple to agree to every conceivable upgrade that model could offer. The dealership manager later confided to us that the man sold 267 vehicles the prior year, which comes out to 1 sale every 1.4 days.

Sadly, salesmanship is not a skill that most CPAs possess.

I must be moving up in the world – only nobody told me!

                                                                           

I have this habit that I execute on Monday mornings. I clean out my junk mail folder on Outlook which is, for some reason, strangely empty on Friday afternoon and yet by Monday morning at 7 am, is stockpiled with offers and pitches for products, edgy publication subscriptions and health aid testimonials that for decorum let’s just say they claim that once ingested, will make Casanova seem like a middle school wallflower.

But lately the spam mails have been going upscale.

Where I once received regular solicitations from my local Volkswagen and Kia dealers, last weekend I received an invitation to come down to a Mercedes dealer and check out their new and used 550 series. Since that model’s MSRP is roughly $95,000, some marketer somewhere must have inadvertently added another zero to our adjusted gross income.

Truth be told it was sort of flattering, nonetheless. But it gets better.

Apparently, someone in auto cyberspace thinks that our financial profile fits the dream customer and thus I received another luxury car offer – this one from one of the premier vehicles currently manufactured. The Bentley.

Now I have been in a Bentley exactly once in my lifetime and I can readily attest to its justifying an average price tag of $200,000 and up. From a hand-stitched leather interior, mahogany dashboard, 12-cylinder high performance engine and top-of-the-line Breitling clock, a routine tune-up and oil change would most likely run comfortably in four figures. And trust me, you cannot insure it with a Geico policy.

Well as much as I would have liked to preserve those emails for posterity, I had little choice but to delete them into the circular file of cyberspace.

But wait, there’s more!

Don’t Play the Waiting Game!

Last week I was privileged to teach a class on succession for one of the major software vendors to the accounting profession. The session like most everything in the era of COVID-19 was held virtually – a major disappointment because the annual three-day confab was initially scheduled to be held in Florida – which would have been a welcome respite to what is heretofore been a bit of a frosty fall in the Northeast.

You don’t need to enroll in a CPE class to know that we are living in unprecedented times – the coronavirus has impacted every facet of daily life and its eventual effect on the economy may yet far exceed that of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As is customary the webinar provided a Q&A box for attendees who were certainly not hesitant to pepper me with questions – particularly those related to succession planning amidst the pandemic.

But perhaps the question that really drew my attention was when one participant wanted to know if they should be doing anything differently regarding succession in the face of the national crises. Should we be putting it off?

I thought about that for a moment and in an oversimplification, I quickly answered “no.”

And basically, that was my response.

Say Scram to the Spam!

Last week marked a robocall milestone at Chez Carlino.

Over the course of a workday – this one beginning promptly at 8 a.m. and ending somewhere around 6 p.m., I received a total of 13 robocalls. Let me repeat that for emphasis: THIRTEEN! And sadly, they were equitably divided between my home and business lines.

Now I know as Election Day approaches most of you not surprisingly, have received calls from various political parties and candidates soliciting donations. And on this day, the Republican and Democratic National Committees accounted for six of those 13 calls.

The others were an eclectic mix of expiring car warranties, local business listing upgrades, one from a weight loss clinic in Philadelphia (which I took personal umbrage to) and the other from a chimney cleaning service.

Well that may be one I can use.

But there is hope for those who feel my pain. At least on the business side of things.

No Medals for Trying

 

                                                

A far wiser person than I, once proclaimed that “opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.”

To say that both me and my family missed on some financial opportunities over the years would be like saying that a few businesses lost money during COVID-19.

For example, in the early 1960s, my father had a chance to invest in a parking garage near Pennsylvania Station in New York. At the time, the terminal was crumbling and outdated but was rumored to be in for a complete makeover. Naturally being risk-averse he passed.

Not only did Penn Station undergo a top-to-bottom renovation, but city planners relocated a gleaming new Madison Square Garden on top of it. Prior to the pandemic, the Garden averaged over 300 events a year, so you do the math in terms of parking fees.

As a footnote he instead went partners on a venture that placed stamp machines in drug stores.

Need I say more?

Client Service or Client Disservice?

 

It was the best of times it was the worst of times.

With sincere apologies to Mr. Dickens, the following is not so much a tale of two cities, but rather a tale of two companies and how they each approached customer/client service.

Few would argue that 2020 has been about the worst of times. I won’t rehash the free-fall that the pandemic has wrought, as that would take far more space than I’m allotted twice weekly in this column, but suffice to say there isn’t one person who hasn’t been affected in some way, whether through their business, or via the remote learning mandate for their children forcing working parents to remain home.

To wit.

My fitness center, which incidentally refers to its members as “clients, “officially reopened on August 24, after having been closed since St. Patrick’s Day - albeit at 33 percent capacity. In a letter to members, err… clients, they offered the final week in August as a “test,” so members could determine whether they wanted to either restart or freeze their membership,

Far be it from me to refuse a free anything.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my credit card statement and saw that not only had they billed me for the month, but also charged me for the week that was supposed to be complimentary. So, I called their customer service department, and the conversation went something like this:

 

Me: “I’m calling to find out why you folks charged me for the week that was supposed to be free.”

Rep: “It was not free sir; it was a trial to see if you wanted to restart your membership.”

Me: “So, let me understand this, if I froze my membership then I would not have gotten charged?”

Rep: “That’s correct.”

Me: “But it was specifically represented as a trial period. In what universe is a trial period not free?”

Rep: (Silence, crickets, take your pick).

Me: “Hello?”

Rep: “I can let you speak to our regional manager if you like.”

Me: “No thanks. I will call my credit card company and have them dispute the charge.”

 

Now contrast that experience to one I had recently with my local supermarket.

It’s a rapidly expanding family owned business that I like to call the Nordstrom of grocery customer service. They go out of their way to help the customers to the point of ordering a requested item not in stock and delivering it to their house in person.

Last weekend we were having company and the Mrs. decided that short ribs would serve as the main offering. One problem, they were out of short ribs. I was about to settle for brisket when the owner himself overheard my plight, made one phone call to their central commissary, and told me that the order would be ready in less than an hour.

And not stopping there, he offered to have someone deliver it in the company van.

I thanked him but told him I would return to pick it up. Truth be told, the store is more expensive than the big box chain grocers in the area, but customer service vignettes like that are why I do not think twice about paying more for some things.

Examples like that are truly the best of times in sadly the worst of times.

That Dreaded C Word!

                                            

Legendary investor Warren Buffet once remarked that writing a check was the difference between making a commitment and participating in a conversation. Or, breaking it down in simpler terms, take a basic recipe of ham and eggs. One can surmise that the chicken participated, whereas the pig made a commitment.

The “C” word – commitment - has been hard to come by these days – particularly within the sphere of CPA firm M&A.

There’s always existed an intractable dichotomy in any deal – whether selling a CPA firm or a used car. The buyer wants to pay the least amount for the item in question while the seller firm wants to get as much as they possibly can.

Add to that the fact that accountants have historically, been about the least decisive demographic when it comes to making a personal business decision that I have ever encountered. They can easily dispense sage advice to clients, but when it comes to their own firms, they stammer and hem like a confused contestant on Final Jeopardy.

No matter the facts to the contrary on their lack of succession, many just cannot bring themselves to pull the trigger. And the COVID-19 pandemic has only served to exacerbate their indecision.

I realize that meeting a potential buyer/successor over a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call will probably not prompt most people to sell or merge without actually meeting said buyer in person.

A Loss of Appetite

In another lifetime I spent 12 years covering the restaurant industry.

No, not reviewing them, but rather my job was to focus on the business portion of foodservice operations although admittedly, the perks and benefits were perhaps the best of any job I’ve ever had.

For example, I had an open invitation to Le Cirque and The Four Seasons in New York, as well as Spago out on the left coast.

A veteran of the industry once told me that the single most expensive thing in a restaurant is an empty seat. So, you can imagine the degree of damage the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought on the foodservice landscape. Initially, during the pandemic, many were shuttered completely with no inkling of when they would reopen. When certain states relaxed their prohibitions, many were allowed only take-out and delivery services or relegated to outdoor dining only.

I can only image the present and future impact on CPA firms who count restaurants as a major portion of their client base. Not to say that foodservice is the only sector where firms will have to being searching for replacement clients, ditto for bowling alleys, hair salons and movie theaters.

It seemed each day another restaurant brand announced either closures or an intent to file for Chapter 11. On a personal level many familiar names were dining staples of my college and young adult life when discretionary income, was well, not so discretionary.

The Waiting Game Can Be the End Game

My teammates used to joke that when I played high school football, I was the starting “drawback.”

Despite an obvious lack of talent, the coach decided that at 150 lbs. I was suited to play outside linebacker and surmised I was able to take on 200-pound plus offensive lineman as they led running backs on sweeps and draw plays.

I begged to differ but at least he was playing me.

One game late in my senior season, we were ahead by five points when the opposing team marched some 80 yards down to our five-yard line with less than 30 seconds to play. Instead of covering the halfback circling out of the backfield, I hesitated thinking the quarterback would attempt to run and before I knew it, the back had gathered in a soft pass for the winning score.

I expected an old-fashioned ass-reaming but instead the coach calmly pointed out that indecision or as he termed it, “paralysis by analysis” rarely leads to a happy ending. But he stressed that even a bad decision is sometimes better than no decision at all.

Fast forward far too many years than I want to reveal here, and I see the CPA succession version of that play time and again.

A Much-Overlooked Competitor

A number of years ago I was interviewing one of the partners of a mid-sized accounting firm about a new service line they launched and during the course of the conversation asked him point blank who his largest competitor was.

Since his practice was in the New York area I expected him to recite the names of several regional or even Top100 firms sited in the tri-state region.

Without hesitating for a second, he simply replied “the banks.”

It took a moment for that to sink in.

Sensing my confusion, he proceeded with a deeper dive.

He explained that the large banks and even some of the smaller brands offered many of the small business services to their clients that his firm did – financial statement preparation and wealth management just to name two.

Like any good journalist verifying his sources, I visited the local branch of a large banking institution and snared an armful of those promotional pamphlets that banks always seem to stockpile on a rack at the entrance.

Sure enough, their offerings included such products as elder care, estate and trust planning, asset management as well as number of small business-centric financial services.

I subsequently wrote several columns about my findings and for the most part was met with some degree of derision from subscribers. “They could not possibly have the expertise that we have,” was a common thread among responses.

Okay, fast forward about a decade.

The Elephant in the COVID-19 Room

It was only a matter of time.

I should have known something was amiss when over the course of the past two weeks I received no less than five phishing emails purportedly from such august institutions as Microsoft, Bank of America and Verizon asking me to re-enter personal information – the result of internal software glitches that somehow lost that protected data. Or so they claimed.

It was hard to keep from even mild chuckling when I noticed that the Microsoft address was a Gmail account. Meanwhile the one from Bank of America was in fuzzy black and white with Bank spelled “Banc.”

Seriously.

Which sort of ties into today’s missive, the spike in fraud since the pandemic.

Recently, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners released a report that said 77 percent of the organization’s over 2,000 members who responded to the survey indicated that they have witnessed an increase in fraud since the outbreak of COVID-19. No surprise there.

And perhaps more disturbing is that 92 percent predicted a steady increase in malfeasance over the next 12 months.

Predictably the largest rise was insurance fraud (12 percent from the last report) followed by bank and loan fraud, identity theft and employee embezzlement. The area where most ACFE members project the largest growth is cyber fraud where over 90 percent indicated a rise over the next year.

With the number of remote workers increasing exponentially as a result of the pandemic, the organization said that trend can usher in a spike in fraud because employees are away from their direct reports and upper management with many able to gain access to company internal systems 24/7.

With so many small businesses fighting for survival, it’s also not surprising that management may push the envelope in ways that they normally would not with regard to risk assessment and tolerance or on completing financial statements.

Closer to home, there was an article in my local newspaper that a nearby medical supply company is currently under indictment for fraudulent billing stemming from COVID-19 testing. And I am fairly certain that the number of companies running afoul of the law during the pandemic will not stop at one before it’s all over.

And you can “Banc” on that.

Sorry, just couldn’t resist.

“Mailing” It In!

I’m not exactly going out on a limb when I say there has been a bit of recent controversy surrounding the United States Post Office. The issue of whether you are pro or con on mail-in ballots is fodder for a future column, but I digress.

Sadly, since 2007, the USPS has posted more red ink than all my corrected math and English papers from grades 2-12. $78 billion to be exact including a $2.2 billion loss the last quarter. Now one can point to a litany of reasons for its bottom-line malaise, but again that’s content for a future debate.

Not long ago I spoke with a former assistant Postmaster General who explained that one of the major causes of the downhill slide was the advent of electronic bill payments, which resulted in a precipitous drop in volume of what is known as remittance mail. Why take the time to hand write checks and affix stamps to your utility and credit card bills when you could pay with the click of a mouse?

Add to that delivery competition from UPS, FedEx, DHL and Amazon Prime and you have what basically has become a Blockbuster Video economic model in era of Netflix.

But my experience with the post office on a local level is likely a microcosm of what’s happening nationally.

The Scarlet S – for Stupidity!

Comedian Bill Engvall – one of the original members of the Blue-Collar Comedy Tour - has this side-splitting routing called “Here’s Your Sign.” Its theme is that less than intelligent folks should be mandated to wear signs bearing the phrase “I’m Stupid,” as to save anyone the trouble of asking them a question.

As an example, he recounted the plight of a motorist whose engine had suddenly caught fire. A good but dim-witted Samaritan pulled over and asked if his car was on fire. The motorist replied, “No, it just wanted to take a cigarette break. Here’s your sign!”

I’m sure most of us have wanted to hang a sign on one or more people at various times. Like the time I was taking a run down the main artery of my town in 90-degree weather and had just slowed down when a couple taking a stroll in the opposite direction asked me if the heat was uncomfortable. I replied no, despite appearances, I was not really drenched with sweat, someone just decided to spray me with a garden hose.

Here’s your sign!

Sadly, even professional people deserve to wear a sign at times. Or in some cases, on a regular basis.

To Absent Clients

Recently I was scrolling through Yahoo Finance! and came across a video interview with the owner of the legendary Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, the century old training and battle ground for both amateur and professional boxers. The past and present champions who have trained there over the years would nearly fill the New York City white pages.

In any event, Gleason’s, like thousands of other fitness facilities in New York, had been shuttered since March. Therefore, no member dues were coming in and the owner had a balloon tax payment due that he admittedly could not make. He pleaded on camera with the powers that be in Albany to allow him to reopen.

Next week, thankfully, gyms across New York will be allowed to remove the padlocks from their doors – albeit under strict COVID-19 rules – such as limited capacity, no shower facilities, and mandatory masks etc.

But I got to thinking.

Five months without any cash-flow would place a tremendous strain on a large corporate owned facility, let alone the thousands of small gym or mom-and-pop business owners across New York as well as other states.

Ditto for restaurants. I read recently where two upscale establishments in the expansive and Hudson Yards development on the west side of Manhattan were closing shop for good – barely a year after they opened.

How many times do you suppose that scenario will be repeated before year end? On a personal level two family owned restaurants and a barber shop in my area have placed the proverbial soap on the windows. The signs on the front door explain that they are closed “for renovations” but as most of you know that’s code for “we’re outta business.”

If your CPA practice serviced clients in those sectors, how many would be left standing at the end? That would unquestionably ignite a severe trickle-down effect, as accounting practices are usually among the last to feel the impact of a downturn.

For those who follow the accounting trade press and profession-centric webinars the majority of articles and presentations project the quantum changes that are sure to reshape the industry as we know it – whether by exponentially increasing their remote workforce as a result of being sequestered by the pandemic, a major loss of clients or firms morphing into more of a consulting entity as opposed to a firm that provides basic compliance services.

Either way change is coming.

And there is no known mask or vaccine that can prevent that.

Another Quintessential New Yorker Leaves Us

Back when they still referred to grades 7-9 as Junior High School, my parents began a subscription to was then a fledgling start-up called New York magazine. Not to be confused with the legendary New Yorker, the new kid on the block featured articles by some the Big Apple’s most contemporary writers like Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, Gail Sheehy, Gay Talese and Nat Hentoff as well as grizzled news veterans like Jimmy Breslin.

I was flipping through a June 1969 issue when I came across a profile of heavyweight boxer Jerry Quarry, who was preparing to challenge Joe Frazier for the title at Madison Square Garden. For those old enough to remember, Quarry was a hard-punching face-first fighter from California who, unfortunately, emerged at the same time as Frazier and Muhammad Ali and was therefore rendered to perennial contender status for the duration of his career.

The article titled “The Great White Hope” described in uncomfortable detail Quarry’s spartan training regimen while sequestered at Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskill Mountains. The author was Pete Hamill - another battle tested soldier of the Big Apple’s tabloid wars, who if you sliced his arm, would no doubt have bled his beloved New York.  He would often remark that you could just “wander around and let the city dictate the script.”

I kept that magazine for nearly 10 years and today have a printed copy of the piece among my boxing memorabilia. It was then I became an immediate fan of his – whether reading his columns in the New York Daily News, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire Magazine or one of his many books and novellas.

He was the eldest of seven children born to Irish immigrants and a high school dropout, yet rose to become a reporter at the New York Post, and had covered the Vietnam War, riots, sporting events and was just feet from Bobby Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He even found time to squire around Shirley MacLaine, Linda Ronstadt and Jacqueline Onassis.

Don’t Count the Big Apple Out Just Yet

While yet another appliance at Chez Carlino went on the fritz – this time thankfully it was just a broken dryer belt – I found myself engaged in a brief but lively conversation with the repairman, who interestingly enough sold real estate as a sideline.

His territory was the northern part of the suburban county where I live and he said for the first time in his career, the buyer market far exceeded inventory of available homes – by nearly a 3-to-1 margin.

He explained there was a massive exodus from New York City – fueled partly by the COVID-19 pandemic and shuttered businesses, the other a spike in crime thanks largely to the reduction in policing policies and bail reform measures championed by the buffoon currently occupying City Hall and his idiot minions on the City Council. (his words not mine, but you will not get an argument from me.)

In any event, his theory was that New York City was amid a decline from which it may never recover. Even local suburban papers carried articles on how outlying towns are basically positioning themselves as havens from the urban blight.

But New York has seen its share of tough times before and has managed to rebound each time when either nature or events have smacked it with a 2-by-4.

HGTV – COVID Style

When it comes to home improvement chores, I suddenly have no less than six thumbs.

Whether painting, measuring, hammering, drilling, or spackling, the finished project often resembles the aftermath of a Kindergarten arts and crafts hour.

I’m sure those of you sequestered with your better half during this pandemic have seen the traditional “honey-do” list increase exponentially. You know those fix-it activities that begged procrastination.

So as you may imagine, I shook like a 16-year old asking the head cheerleader to the prom when my bride announced with little or no room for interpretation or argument, “this weekend we are going to hang curtains.”

Not on one window mind you, but THREE. She had tired of the off-red hue of the existing drapes and wanted to bring more light into the designated rooms via lighter colored curtains.

I could only envision the result; curtain rods dangling at 20-degree angles and ill-measured drill holes littered throughout the sheetrock.

Not something a camera crew would want to film for an episode of HGTV.

Undaunted, I tried to wriggle out of my spousal responsibility, but the conversation went something like this.

Balancing Pandemic Imbalance

A number of years ago, I was watching the evening news and one of the local features showcased parents who not only curtailed the time their children could watch TV at night, but installed a stationary exercise bike that was hard wired to the set.

So long as the children kept pedaling, the set was on. The moment they paused they were greeted with a frozen screen.

Needless to say, there were probably very few couch potatoes in that litter.

I remembered that vignette this week when my morning paper contained an article spotlighting several devices that promised to make working remotely during COVID-19 not only more efficient but restore a semblance of balance and sanity as well.

Now I have been working remotely since 2012 and after a quarter century of commuting to New York City, admittedly, it took some getting used to. I found myself talking out loud so often, that had I been in an office, I most likely would have been escorted by human resources to a psychologist. I also missed the camaraderie, as this was several years before Zoom and Microsoft Teams became a regular part of the remote worker’s lexicon.

The Lease is on the Other Foot

As the number of 90-degree days in July slowly approached the double-digit mark, our cranky air conditioning system finally surrendered. While waiting for the repair crew to install a replacement unit and present me with an invoice exceeding the cost of my first new car, I decided to escape the oppressive swamp that was my home’s interior temperature and cool off at the town pool.

In between laps I struck up an interesting conversation with a fellow in the adjacent swimming lane. He was a jeweler by trade who for years maintained a business in New York City. He, like many non-essential other businesses, had been forced to close for months during COVID-19. He revealed that for years he had been at constant odds with the landlord, who insisted on an annual hike on the lease, sometimes demanding an unrealistic amount for the space. If my new swimming companion didn’t like it, he was told in no uncertain terms, there was a long line of potential renters waiting to take over. After calculating relocation and construction costs, he determined that it was probably better to remain where he was, as unpleasant as that might be.

But that was then, and this is now.

With the pandemic forcing thousands of companies to sequester much of their workforce and work remotely, one of the sectors not likely to rebound all that quickly is office real estate. For example, professional services like CPA firms, investment banking entities and even law offices, many who had previously discouraged working remotely, suddenly discovered they could be equally productive as before COVID-19 sans the bricks and mortar.

That does not portend well for those in office real estate. Already many accounting practices are mapping out strategies to reduce their space or even move out completely. One practitioner I spoke with in New York is currently functioning in a We Works space and has no plans to relocate to a more permanent base.

Even in my bucolic hamlet, I have seen signs spring up like ragweed advertising available office space in the local business park. One even stated that “rates are negotiable.”

Seeing a sign like that even five years ago was almost unthinkable. Those rental overseers who were often referred to as gluttons, now, ironically, face a glut of inventory.

Going forward that will likely be the rule rather than the exception. In a classic example of schadenfreude the jeweler said he had an appointment with his landlord this week to discuss the terms of his lease.

Remind me again what they often say about payback?

Dressed For Success?

With temperatures spiking close to 90 last week, I felt it was time to assess my summer wardrobe and determine which articles of clothing should be kept and which others should be bagged and carted off to charity.

I have an overstock of T-shirts – due in no small part to the recent online fire sales at Lacoste and Polo but shorts however were a different matter. Now traditionally I do not wear anything that extends below the knee from June through Labor Day with the obvious exceptions of client visits or upscale social events like weddings.

But this year’s inventory was close to barren. One good pair of what could be termed “dress shorts” and 3 others of what many (including my family) consider a borderline fashion crime – cargo style.

So, with the retail outlets opening in New York under Phase 3, I ventured out to restock my armoire. I won’t mention the name of the national retail giant I hoped could help, but their corporate office is in Wisconsin, if that gives you a clue. 

As luck would have it, I found four pairs in my size and now all that remained was to try them on in the store’s cavernous rows of dressing rooms.

Except I couldn’t.

Three giant fuchsia cones were stationed at the entrance accompanied by an over-sized block-letter sign that Mr. Magoo couldn’t overlook: “DRESSING ROOMS CLOSED.”

So, I defaulted to my usual customer service strategy – I went looking for a manager.

She was polite and patient but explained they were restricted by the state and therefore the rooms had to remain shuttered.

For those keeping score at home, the conversation went something like this:

“But I need to try them on to see if they fit. What happens if I buy them and later discover that the dreaded COVID-15 (lbs.) has me doing an impression of John Candy with Brad Pitt’s shorts.”

“Well you could always bring them back and return them.”

“But the idea is to try them on, so I DON’T have to come back.”

“I’m sorry but our hands are tied.”

Frustrated I left without a purchase, resigning myself wearing cargo shorts until the policy is lifted.

On the way home I ran into a neighbor of mine carrying a bag from a competitive retailer. When I recounted my dressing room plight, she said that the store she went to not only had the dressing rooms open, but in fact were running a sale on men’s shorts and had purchased several pairs for her sons.

There oughta be a law. Especially one size that fits all.

Sorry I could not resist.

The World is on Back Order

Several weeks ago, I detailed how several of the high-ticket appliances at Chez Carlino conspired to break down and subsequently drain whatever emergency reserve funds we had. First the washing machine refused to forward to the spin cycle. Then the dishwasher determined it would cease washing dishes and utensils.

And finally, just in time for summer, the burner elements on our grill rusted out and broke apart like a picture window being smashed by a 2 X 4.

The first two I managed to replace without much difficulty, although the dishwasher like several million other pieces of merchandise across the country was on a three-week back order.

But that was a momentary lapse in time compared to the Seinfeld-like vignette of buying a grill. The bride who does more research prior to purchasing anything over $50 than most scientists developing a new vaccine, spent hours looking at various models and even fashioned an Excel file, which charted price and features comparisons. I personally went to Home Depot, Lowe’s and two local hardware stores to examine their respective inventories.

I had a certain price point in mind and none of the above either matched it or had anything close to what I was looking for in stock. “Check back in a couple of weeks,” I was told.

As an avid griller, I was not going to wait until mid-July to fire up burgers and steaks. It was bad enough my gym had been shuttered since mid-March and my town pool is still debating whether to open for the summer. There are certain things I simply will not wait for.

But it gets better.

What’s That Saying About Necessity?

Years ago, when I was heading one of the profession’s top B-to-B accounting publications I asked a veteran managing partner if he ever would allow any of his staff to work from home. This was back in the day when “remote worker” was a term about four area codes from the mainstream.

He looked at me in the manner of someone who was just asked for a loan by a deadbeat relative. “Oh sure, I’m sure they’ll be working diligently in between The Price is Right and The Young and the Restless.”

I gathered at the time he was not a fan of the concept.

For some reason I thought about that interaction last week when the folks at Verizon finally arrived to upgrade my Internet – an order I placed nearly three months ago. And no, that’s not a typo – three months.

The technician explained that the backlog of upgrade orders since COVID-19 was so overwhelming, that some subscribers would not be serviced until September. He revealed that the day before, he installed a new router and wiring in a house that had SIX family members working on a dining room table. I shuddered to think of what mealtimes looked like at that address.