Taking Business Phone for Granted

Located in Manhattan, my company occupies a small space in the basement of a upper east side brownstone. Because the space is so limited, we store our servers and phone equipment in the boiler room. I know what you're thinking, and you're absolutely right. It's not a good idea to put your most expensive equipment in a tiny room that feels like the foyer to hell.

When we set up shop over a year ago, we thought the same thing. Unfortunately, the rental price of a property in Manhattan that was actually large enough for our business scared us much more than the possibility of losing our equipment. Within a week of the boiler being turned on for winter the first year we were there, we started to have problems with the servers. They were going down quite often and we all knew it was a result of them of overheating from being cramped up in that inferno of a room. After a while, we decided to move them out into the office space, which was no easy task as we were practically on top of each other as it was. This solved the problem, however, so we decided to keep our phone equipment in the boiler room as it seemed to operate fine despite the circumstances. That was a huge mistake.

One January day, when the boiler had been running nonstop, our phone system went down. It never occurred to me how important a business phone system could be before that day. Losing the computers for an hour or so was rough, but since we deal with our clientele over the phone, losing our ability to communicate made doing business practically impossible. It took three days to get our equipment up and running, some of which needed to be replaced. We lost a lot of business over the three days, as you might imagine. Now our tiny space is even more cramped as the phone system equipment has been removed from the boiler room, but believe me...it sure beats the alternative.