False Advertising

At work, we moved a bunch of filing cabinets and boxes into a storage unit to make more room for desks in the office for all the new people we are hiring. I was put in charge of measuring all of the filing cabinets and boxes that needed to go into the storage unit and then getting them all to fit into the unit while still having access to everything. My supervisor reserved a 10' by 10' (120" by 120") unit for our stuff.

To make sure all the stuff we wanted to get in there would fit, I drew a to-scale layout (on graph paper) of the storage room. I planned for 120" by 120" and I got everything drawn in that we needed. But a couple of days before the big move, we decided to go and measure the room just to make sure it was the size that it was supposed to be. Guess what. When we measured it, it was only 108" by 118" and I was so mad.

You have no idea how mad I was about this. I had spent a lot of time on that floor plan and the unit ended up being A WHOLE FOOT LESS than what it was advertised as and not even quite 10' on the longer side. We went and complained about it and the only thing the man said was, the sizes are approximate. Sure I understand a couple inches off, for approximate, but NOT A WHOLE FOOT. I realize that most people probably would not even notice the size difference if they're just throwing in boxes and other random things, but it mattered to us.

Since they offered no change of the storage unit, we just had to deal with the 108" by 118". So I had to rework the floor plan to make it work again. Although I only had to take out one of the filing cabinets in the reworking, to me it's the principle of the matter. If a storage unit is advertised as 10' by 10', it should be 10' by 10' with maybe a couple inches of leeway, but that's it.

(I wrote this post right after it happened and now it's been a month or so and I'm over it and relieved that it's all over.) :)

Here's a picture of my floor plan. Although it looks nice on the paper, it took multiple drafts before I found the most efficient way to get all of the filing cabinets in there and still have space to open the drawers. Each square equals 3" and the scribbly out part on the top is the WHOLE FOOT LESS that I had to take out after we measured the unit.