John Linton
...but this move appears to have gone as well as any I've been involved in.
Annette and I had dinner with Steve on the Monday night after we returned from Sri Lanka and he stopped off in Sydney on his way back to Perth from Interop in Las Vegas. We had all had successful trip results and I was stupid enough to say that everything was going really well with the business which was good to see as we had all been out of the country for a week for the first time since we decided to start the business. Steve said I should be more careful about making such statements as they always presaged 'disaster'.....and so it proved to be.
About 10.30 the following morning (Tuesday 26th May) our CFO dropped a letter on my desk saying that I had better read it as it was urgent. So I read the tersely written three paragraph letter of demand from our land lord (actually the recently appointed agent of the land lord) giving us 7 days to quit the property or else. "Or else" seemed to include locking us out of the property and sequestering all goods and chattels not removed from the premises by 12 midnight on May 31st 2009.
Now we had given our landlord notice on 24th March 2009 that we would move by either 31st May 2009, if we could, or by June 30th 2009 if anything went wrong (as things tend to when you buy a new property and then do major renovations and refurbishment). We had been on a month by month lease for some months up to now as we waited to complete the purchase and renovation of our newly acquired floor space and not having heard anything from the agent had not really rushed to complete the work as we resigned ourselves to paying 'dead rent' until June 30th if things went wrong with our plans.
Now, being a fairly tough person with a relatively quick mind and some reasonable amount of experience of dealing with total ***holes, I was concerned at the tone and content of the letter but having met the writer on two occasions I responded after a few minutes thought as follows:
"Dear Sir,
We acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 25th May 2009 in which you demand we vacate the premises we currently occupy before June 1st 2009.
We have previously advised you that we will vacate the premises by June 30th 2009 and we have heard nothing from you since we advised you of that situation in writing.
It is not convenient for us to arrange a move at such short notice and we would like you to withdraw your demand; we are at a loss to understand why you would make such an unreasonable and unrealistic demand of a long term and ‘trouble free’ tenant.
Should you be unwilling to do that we will ask our solicitors to seek a court order to prevent you taking such any action as it is completely unreasonable.
J Linton
(for Exetel Pty Ltd)"
My view was that we were being blackmailed by an unethical sleazebag agent and a, presumably, equally morally challenged land lord who figured that we wouldn't be able to move a highly complex $A50 million a year business that had, and was completely reliant upon, complex telephone and data line services installed in the offices with, effectively, three and a half working days notice and he was demanding six months rent (at a much higher rental) if we were still occupying the premises at midnight on May 31st. This was clearly based on his assessment that we also had two or three hundred thousand dollars of equipment and fittings that couldn't be moved without seriously damaging our ability to operate the Exetel business and therefore our fear of them being 'sequestered'..
As can be seen from my 5 minute reply I knew that we could use the court process to get a 'cease and desist' order within 24 hours from the NSW Supreme Court so after my initial surprise I wasn't particularly concerned but I was very, very angry. So after thinking about it for a further 20 minutes or so I walked 'up the road' and had a brief discussion with the project manager of our building renovation program who assured me that he would complete everything on time by late Friday 29th. Over the next few working hours I checked with various people and contacted removalists, cleaners, electricians and our data circuit suppliers and then the decision was made to move the Exetel 'head office', its telephone services that serve 100,000 customers and the major data lines that are essential for our help desk and other support services (both in Australia and Sri Lanka) within 48 hours.
I refuse to talk to the sorts of people who would act in the way that the agent and landlord had acted and referred their reply to my brief "go and get f***ed" email to our solicitors - in their follow up letter the mealy mouthed swine of an agent stated he hoped the matter could be settled "amicably" as he was sure we wouldn't want to damage our business and involve ourselves in legal costs - pretty clear where that piece of sh** thought he was coming from and how difficult/impossible a situation he thought he had put us in.
As of 10.20 pm Friday 29th May we had managed to comply with the totally unethical and completely unreasonable demand but only because we have the good fortune to know very, very competent and resourceful people in the many areas that needed to be actioned in unbelievably short time frames. Just as importantly we have exceptionally gifted and resourceful people within our own organisation. Not only have we moved into and are now operating completely and completely effectively in our brand new premises but we have removed all of the old work stations and the other furniture and fittings we won't need and have safely terminated the electricity and removed the Ethernet cables from the previous offices. The remaining bits and pieces will be removed tomorrow and then the carpets will be steam cleaned on Sunday morning.
In the meantime we relied on our solicitors to meet with the people who had sent the letter and they will deal with the situation of what is required in terms of 'making good' the floor space we have vacated in such a very short time. Hopefully they will reach a mutually sensible "amicable agreement" with the building owner and their "representative" on Monday morning when there is a joint inspection of the completely vacant and cleaned floorspace they ordered us out of three and a half working days before.
The world, or perhaps the business world, seems to have a disproportionate number of very unreasonable people. Fortunately, as Annette sensibly said, reasonable people can usually rely on the other reasonable people they meet in their lives to help them out in times of need - something that unreasonable people will never get to enjoy - as of course they shouldn't.