Sean University: When You’re Feeling Powerless

Thursday, November 3, 2011

In the old days, there was a pretty simple scientific formula for electricity. You took one part kite, one part one part key, one part lightning storm, and five parts dumbness for thinking it’s a good idea to fly a kite when there’s lightning around, and voila: power! But while the process was easy enough, it was also really dangerous because of all the dumbness being released into the environment. That’s why someone was like, “Hey, let’s put this stuff in outlets.”

Fast forward many years, and we, as a society, have become dependent on electricity. For example, just to read this hyper-informative Sean University lesson, you’re using electricity to power your computer, your modem, and (if you’re one of the lucky ones) your robot eyes.

And just like with anything that we rely too much on, life can get really tough when electricity goes away because of a power outage, especially for a small business. Your computer, your printer, that lava lamp you look at to relax – you can’t use any of that stuff. It can be a daunting task to keep things running smoothly without power, but it’s not impossible! Here are 5 simple tips to keep your business running during an outage:

1. Candles are a fire hazard. So if you need light, it’s always best to use highly-concentrated groups of well-trained fire flies.

2. Avoid saying things that will bring down employee morale, like, “well, since there’s no power, your jobs are going to suck even more than usual today.” Instead, try pretending the power outage is a positive thing. Tell your employees that it’s an “In-Office Rustic Work Retreat.” Wear old-timey clothing and bring in a mule to reinforce this.

3. Without a printer to print important documents and a Xerox machine to make copies to distribute among your employees, you’ll have to use an information-disseminating technique from ancient times: just telling people stuff and making up any parts that you forget.

4. A power outage, no matter how small, can mess up your alarm clock; that’s why it’s important to set a back up alarm on your cell phone. But if your cell phone dies and you don’t have power, there will be no way to charge it; that’s why it’s important to set a second back up alarm on your steam-powered clock.

5.  Before going into any room in your office building, ask yourself this important question: “how many dangerous criminals or creatures were we storing in here whose electromagnetically locked cages might have opened when the power went out?” If the answer is greater than 0, leave that room alone. If the answer is greater than 6, you might want to work from home.

But hey, your business is like a snowflake, by which I mean, unique (not cold-hearted and proceeding slowly towards its bitter end). Tell me about it in the comments, and I’ll give you some tips for how to get work done with the lights off.
 

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