eMoviePoster.com

 "Thanks! I love doing business with you, both consigning to you and buying from you. You are always so efficient and knowledgeable. I hope my inventory list of my consignments helps some, but I always get the feeling that your encyclopedic minds don't need anything from me at all. And when I was packing up my rolled posters to send to you, I didn't think I was ever going to get them to fit into their tubes. Hats off to you and your crew when it comes to expert wrapping everything you send!"

Of course, I thanked him very much for his great praise, but that got me thinking that many of our buyers might not ever really stop and think about how hard it is to pack so many orders well, especially since we send around 100 every DAY (more than most auctions likely send per month!), and of course we auction items of every shape and size, and we allow so much combining of purchases that we face difficult packing situations every single day.
 
 So we have two people who spend all day every day organizing the items in each auction and then separating them by "who bought what" after each auction. And we have two people who spend all day every day partially packing the items each buyer won (we don't fully pack them because so many people will later combine them with other purchases). We also have four more people who pull all the items each buyer won after he pays, and then combines them into a single package and gets it 100% ready to be picked up by the Post Office or UPS.
 
 The same goes for everything else we do here! We have four photography stations (two "magnetic walls", and two "tables" with cameras mounted over head), plus two scanning stations. All six of the stations must photograph around 200 items each every day, in order for us to prepare enough items each week. And we have four people who spend all day every day creating the auctions for each of those items, and we have three people who spend all day putting the condition descriptions on each of those items. Then there is one person who assembles all the "components" (image, description, and condition) into the 999 auctions, and gets them ready to go online.
 
 When the packages filled with consignments arrive each day (most days we get 10 to 20, and quite often we have people drop off entire carloads or truckloads), there is one person who receives them and emails the consignors that they are here. Then each is opened and the consignor is again emailed with the types of items they sent. Then there are four people who get all those newly arrived items all ready to be photographed and listed.
 
 There are three people who spend all day every day answering the phones and converting the online checkouts into invoices that then go to the shipping people, and there are two more people who oversee our website, our auctions and our battery of computers we have here that makes everything run smoothly. Finally, there is me, Bruce, and like most owners of auction businesses, I spend my days drinking in my office, refusing to take phone calls, and taking long lunches!
 
 Actually, anyone who knows me and the business knows that I am the busiest person here! I do anything and everything that no one else here can do, which keeps me busy all day long. I spend a lot of my time working to get others to take over things that I do, but no matter how many tasks I delegate, there are always enough for me to work all through the day, every day. In addition, I am available every minute I am here to answer phone calls from anyone who wants to "talk straight to the owner" (how many businesses left are there where you can do that?).
 
 Whenever we have someone who drops off their consignments, they are ALWAYS amazed by how busy and hardworking everyone here is. Until they see it in person, they often don't make the connection about what a vast amount of hard work it takes to do all we do, week in and week out, 52 weeks a year. There is one thing that I am 100% certain of. If people were to try doing what we do for just one single day, they would likely have a new found respect for what we do and a realization of how we make something incredibly difficult look "easy"!