Michael Yorker 14:34
Right. And I myself honestly looked at it when I was in Denver for a client helping them prep their office for COVID. I walked by a real estate office and saw you know I can get a two bedroom apartment for $1400 a month and you know about fell over. I pay close to that for a parking space here in the city. And I mean, not literally but you know, $1400 a month is not going to get you an apartment in San Francisco. And I can considered it myself,
Greg Owens 15:00
although there’s there’s deals now in apartments here in the city that I was there yesterday in San Francisco walking down the streets and it feels like a ghost town and especially because like this was over in the sunset district, and so many of the businesses were still boarded up. They were open, but they had wood over their windows and that kind of stuff. Because of all the you know, and I forget this about our year of 2020, you know, we had the the the racial tension in the riots and, you know, things were happening in the city. I also. Yeah, I mean, also the, I completely forgot about the few weeks of smoke, we had that shut even shut us down as painters, right. We couldn’t be outside in that time. And does that I mean, California became a disaster state again.
Michael Yorker 15:47
Yeah, I mean, I, I was sitting in an office in Redwood City at 12 noon, looked outside and the street lights are on, I turned on the headlights with my remote. I turned on the headlights on my car that I could see in the parking lot. And you know, it was almost like it was nine o’clock at night at 12 Noon. The smoke was so bad. But yeah, with, you know, I live in downtown San Francisco here, right. I’m on Nob Hill on your Union Square. And driving through Union Square. A lot of businesses are boarded up. And as you say, you know, like Walgreens, for example, just because I was there yesterday. They’re boarded up, but they’re open. And they’re keeping the boards on the windows because there’s no public activity or there’s very little public activity at night. So the folks that are looking for trouble have easy pickings right now. So they’re keeping the boards on the windows, right? And then of course, all the hotels are boarded up, a lot of restaurants are boarded up. But what I’m seeing as far as rent, the landlords haven’t quite started reducing rent, as of yet. I do see on the first in the 15th a lot of old couches on the on the curb, a lot of old beds, a lot of furniture on the curb. So people are moving out. And I’m not saying you know, moving tracks where people are going the other direction. So I’m you know, because I rent myself I’m I’m hoping to see a large reduction in the cost of living in San Francisco, at least for a little while.
Greg Owens 17:21
Yeah, no, I know that my A friend of mine, redecorated her whole house by picking up people’s throwaways that left them on the street as they’re moving out, right. And as they downsize, you know, they can’t even sell it. They just put it out on the street to give it away or hope that the gets picked up by the garbage company, I
Michael Yorker 17:41
guess. Yeah, I held the front door of my building open for one of my neighbors, who is dragging a desk in the front door that she found on the curb. And she said, Well, you know, I got to work from home. I need a desk. Sure. But yeah, I haven’t I haven’t quite done that. My You know, I’ve been in my apartment for 20 years. So I need to downsize myself.
Greg Owens 18:01
Yeah, yeah. So in your now in your experience, it’s been a full year today was Today marks the official day for me, like, as a company, we got shut down. Even painting got shut down, we were not considered an essential service and right, and we were shut down for about five or six weeks. We’re on on St. Patty’s Day. And so what have you, what are you seeing as like the future of the workplace in any ways? Like, what have you seen out there that’s innovative? Or how do you see us coming back into buildings?
Michael Yorker 18:34
Well, a lot of the a lot of the technology as far as coming back, a lot of shared seating, a lot of interesting technology, for example, you know, Darcy is one of those scanners that we use, and a few of my clients, you know, like everybody, you you fill out a questionnaire in the morning, you go in, they take your temperature, but this software will actually activate your card key when you scan, and it registers that you’re wearing a mask and your temperature is normal, and you filled out your survey answering correctly that you’re not sick, then it activates your card key for the day. And then they have scanners throughout the office that if you’re seen without a mask, it will flag you, it will send a text and security or HR or whoever needs to go over and tap you on the shoulder well not tap you on the shoulder wave at you thanks to COVID and tell you to put your mask back on so the technology is really surprising. And I have seen the cost of those scanners back a year ago those scanners were you know four or $5,000. Now they’re $900. Oh, the hardware and so the cost has come down considerably. But the ease of use for a lot of the a lot of this stuff has come a long way. And what I have always tried to implement in years past is shared seating. So you have somebody you know, for example, that salesperson that comes into the office Once a month, but has a dedicated desk to them. I tried to implement, you know, assigned seating or hotel Hotel seating, so to speak. And nobody ever approves that well now with COVID every seat is a hotel, we boxed up everything. And now every seat is shared. And an employee. When they do their morning questionnaire, they select the seat they want to use for the day at the end of the day that alerts janitorial that that seat was used. So the employees are are asked to sanitize but then we have the janitors go in, at night, and re sanitize the desk that was actually you. So there’s been some practices to recover, that I think are going to stay, which is nice to see, as well as the level of cleaning has gone up considerably. And as a facilities manager, you know, I love seeing that. Yeah.
Greg Owens 20:56
Yeah, it was,
Greg Owens 20:58
it was really interesting. You just enlightened me and why we’re, we’ve been painting a bunch of single person offices, and they were telling me that the converting them to a conference room, but I don’t think that’s actually true. Now, for the some of these companies that we do work for, I think what you’re doing is hot seating those rooms, like that person is not going to have an office anymore. The room is going to be a dedicated. And like the technology that makes so much sense. So the technology means that like you, as you come up to the office, you’re told which office is yours for that day. And you know, you’ll go to room 168. And so then you just go to room 168. And that’s your office for the day, but you don’t get to keep your personal stuff in there anymore.
Michael Yorker 21:41
Right. I mean, some clients are assigning some clients are letting you choose. But yeah, I mean, the personal offices, well, for many years, personal offices have been going away, which is sad I loved my old office. Now I sit in cubicles with everybody else. But like one of my clients, you know, the only the CEO has a private office, the CFO, the COO, the CIO, all sit in a cube, and not a management cube, not a whole section of cubes, they are there in just regular cube with the rest of us with how, you know, to me, it’s a double edged sword, you know, some things you want to talk about, you know, from a facility standpoint, you know, I may be moving to a new office or moving the company to a new office, which can be a very exciting thing. But then the rumour mill hears me talking on the phone about, you know, shutting down our current office, and everyone immediately fears the worst. So yeah, I mean, shared offices would be a wonderful thing. But now we’re going to phone and so on.
Greg Owens 22:40
Yeah. And I see that I, you know, people just don’t in general don’t like change. And this year, in a lot of so many ways, as you pointed out a few times is like the one thing that we’ve had to get used to is change, because the rules are changing, the game is changing. The workplace is changing, you know, and at an unbelievable rate right now. I mean, even like us being on Zoom, you know, everybody getting on Zoom, and really becoming Zoom masters in so many ways this year, you know?
Michael Yorker 23:11
Yeah, well, in the facilities realm, I’m, you know, not so much on Zoom, but FaceTime, you know, whenever I have a question whenever I need to talk to a vendor, and you know, FaceTime and video conferencing has been wonderful. Yeah, when trying to diagnose a fire alarm panel that’s on the fritz showing the natural part that’s warm, it’s been wonderful. compared to years ago, they would have a service call to come out, look at it, then reschedule a service call when the parts came in this way, we can just FaceTime or Zoom with vendors, and then they come out once and bring the right parts. So there’s a blessing in that regard.
Greg Owens 23:49
I couldn’t I couldn’t run the size company I run without using technology like face to FaceTime and those kinds of things. Because I can I don’t have to drive in San Francisco traffic to look at each thing. We can we can do it with pictures, we can do it with FaceTime, we can chat about it, no need to go to this room or go over here and paint that door. Yes, that one. All of those kinds of things have been really, really incredibly beneficial. Any other technology that you’re into and have really sort of see or see coming up and getting better?
Michael Yorker 24:23
Well, as we spoke about before we started the interview. CMMS software and facilities management software is coming a long way. A lot of facilities management software on the market today is great in one field, it’s a great CMMS and master computerized maintenance management software, or it’s a great floor plan software or it’s a great asset tracking software. But there’s there’s very few that are that are all in one and I’m seeing some wonderful changes where software is making drastic improvements and you know for Or facilities ticketing systems, I’ve used ticketing systems where it takes five minutes to open a single ticket to change a light bulb. I mean, I could change the light bulb faster than opening the ticket. Where it’s now open the app point click take a photo and done and the tickets open. So there’s some some wonderful changes, with facilities management software coming up, integration with billing management system. So when you have a high temp, low temp, whatever abnormality in your, in your facility, the BMS system automatically opens the ticket and automatically dispatches based on parameters I set your air conditioning tech, or, you know your your fire alarm tech, or whatever technician needs to resolve the problem as well as alerting the facilities staffer that’s assigned to that particular issue. And you know, back in the day, when, you know, we had a high temp low temp request from an employee, I used to have to run up four floors to go adjust the temperature and unlock the box over the thermostat where now I can do it from my mobile phone. And in the morning, I get reports of the temperature throughout the office. And so when I get the high temp low temp calls, which inevitably you get those every day. In larger facilities, I can tell the folks you know, it’s 72 Did you just come in from outside? Give it a minute, or I don’t say that I tell them all adjusted in 15 minutes after doing nothing, I call them back and say How’s it feel now? And they say, Oh, it’s wonderful. Because they acclimated you know, in the summer, they come in Oh my god, it’s freezing in here. It’s 72. It’s 105 outside, but it’s 72. So of course you think it’s freezing. And in the winter, it’s 72. But it’s 32 outside. So they come in and oh my god, it’s so hot. But it’s 72 year round.
Greg Owens 26:45
That’s particularly particularly probably a very San Francisco problem too, in so many ways. Because we can you know, if you don’t like the weather where you’re at right now, you can drive five minutes and get a whole different experience.
Michael Yorker 26:59
Oh, yeah. Well, I like you mentioned, you’re in Arizona, I had an office for one of my clients, or one of my former employers in Chandler, Arizona, right outside of Phoenix. And it was literally 117 outside. And I walked in myself to the office that was 72 and I had to put on a sweater because it was it felt cold. And then after a few minutes, I got rid of the sweater because I got used to it. Yeah. So it’s kind of that’s kind of the norm throughout where BMS BMS are building BMS systems and the ability to look at the temperatures online, or on my phone and and let the employee know that it is 72. And some of my more concerned co workers that call every day, I would give them little thermometers and tell them if it’s if it’s below 68 Call me if it’s above 74 call me between 68 and 74. You know, that’s that’s kind of where the temperature is supposed to be. That’s set point. And they quit calling
Greg Owens 28:06
any of the software like the cutting edge software CMS products that you see out there? Which one are you seeing is like being a front runner in combining all these old legacy systems into one package that seems workable right now.
Michael Yorker 28:20
So I’m working with a software company called Sensfix, and they reached out to me in July of 19, and asked if I would help them as an advisor and I pounced To me it was an opportunity to finally build one that’s cost effective that actually works because I’ve used systems you know, IBM’s Maximo JIRA Maptician, Envoy, and everyone is great in their one field and occupier for leases and I go on where Sensfix is putting everything into one CMMS CMMS software and in CMMS computerized maintenance management software is only one aspect of what they do, you know, I can manage my leases, I can track assets, so facilities assets, you know, your desk, ergonomic chair and so on to your IT assets, your laptop, your docking station, your phone, and then Maptician is my mapping software, but no Sensfix can do the map. So I can click on your office Greg and I know that you have a 510 air conditioner in your ceiling or you’ve got a VAV box in your ceiling. I can sort my the layers of electrical, mechanical plumbing, and I can check your IT assets, your HR assets, your facilities assets, and I can grab you and you know switch your office with Cindy’s office and that automatically opens up a ticket with facilities IT and HR letting them know that you you and Cindy just switched offices. So I no longer have to open up three different tickets. And I don’t no longer have to reach out to three different departments to schedule. It’s just done it for me. Sensfix right now to me is the front runner, facilities management software,
Greg Owens 30:09
Cindy is going to be so much happier in my corner office.
Michael Yorker 30:13
Yeah, Cindy is gonna be thrilled. Yeah.
Greg Owens 30:18
And then as we come to get closer to wrapping this up, and I really like to put out there recognizing there’s career opportunities in facilities management. And so what is what do you think is a good way if somebody wants to that’s new to facilities? One, what is the benefits of being in this career? And then also, how to get started in it?
Michael Yorker 30:43
Well, it’s funny, you mentioned how to get started in it. I actually have an old thermal fax. Yes, that was 23 years ago, that I found and framed. It’s from Nelson Staffing. Facilities assistant two week temp assignment reports to John Iman at Looksmart. That’s how I got into facilities. 23 years ago, it was a two week temp assignment. And, you know, I just found that I really loved facilities, as opposed to being a receptionist, or working in accounting or working in other departments. So I got in, you know, building furniture, and, you know, cleaning up the kitchen and running the schmo errands. And you know, Funny enough, 23 years later, I still do that stuff, as well as you know, relocate companies and do you know, the tenant improvements, and so on and so forth. But if somebody wants to get into facilities, you know, there is now degrees you can get in facilities management, you can go that route, or if you’re in the trade, electrical HVAC, it’s an it’s a easy transition to jump over a lot of building engineers have decided to jump over to facilities management. And then there’s folks like me that I was a restaurant manager and bar manager. And now I’m a facilities manager. So just look out there for facilities management, entry level positions, and it’s an easy transition. But it is, to me, it’s a wonderful career. It’s one that every organization needs some form of facilities management. And, you know, I always make the joke, I sit at my desk, I do the budgets, I do the planning, I do the, you know, the computer work so to speak, you know, I do the budget so that I can fund you know, she need to come out and put up a 23 storey crane next to my building and schlep an air conditioner on the roof. That to me is the cool stuff of facilities and hiring vendors come in and paint the office. And you know, paint and carpet are my favorite parts of a TBI because it really goes from this dusty construction site to now. Wow, this office is looking pretty good. Yeah. Anyway.
Greg Owens 32:52
And that transformation is, is I’ve been doing this for 32 years as a painting contractor. And we do do tenant improvement and things like that. But sometimes that transformation, you know, is still I’m always amazed and how beautiful it can come out. You know, and when all that comes together, the paint the carpet, the furniture comes in the decorations and things like that come on the walls, right? It’s like, Whoa, this is a really beautiful space.
Michael Yorker 33:18
Yeah, and even touch ups when I was at the Pacific Stock Exchange, back then, if they hadn’t painted in quite some time, and we went in and put, you know, the new corporate colors on the wall. And it was just a day and night difference. It was you know, it was like, who turned on the lights. And some funny thing at one organization, we had hidden cameras, and I go back to my desk, I sit down, I look up at the cameras, and one of them’s greyed out. I couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with the camera. If I back up and I see the painter painting the hidden camera. He didn’t know it was there. And he’s still one of my painters today. And I tease him about that every time. It was just hilarious that he painted over one of my one of my cameras. But yeah, anyway.
Greg Owens 34:07
Right, right. So yeah, any what would be the best way for people to get a hold of you? Or to find out more about you is LinkedIn a good way?
Michael Yorker 34:16
Yeah, LinkedIn is by far the best way to get a hold of me. And they can open up chat message and LinkedIn and reach out to me. And I’m always happy to network and help folks get into the field and mentor folks. If they want to hire me as a as a consultant, please reach out to me on LinkedIn and I’m always happy to help out
Greg Owens 34:37
Yeah, Link LinkedIn has become an unbelievable, amazing company and a really sort of super powerful business tool to connect with people.
Michael Yorker 34:47
Yeah, it’s become you know, a friend of mine calls it the Facebook of the corporate world, but I can reach out to my colleagues from 20 years ago, and I’m still in contact with them. Without LinkedIn, you know, we would have lost touch But anyway,
Greg Owens 35:01
I take it no plans for celebrating St. Patty’s Day today. There’s, it’s gonna be interesting to see what happens in San Francisco because it’s been a whole year that they’ve kind of like, you know, held held the Irish back, you know, it’d be. I wonder what my friends in the city that are born in in Ireland are going to be doing in there today?
Michael Yorker 35:21
Well, I actually used to live in London and worked in an Irish pub and I was there for St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m happy to say I survived. That was a party like none other. But in San Francisco. You know, last weekend I was watching the crowds go by and go bar hopping bars are now serving on the street, which was unheard of back in the day,
Greg Owens 35:42
right. They’re
Michael Yorker 35:42
getting to go cups, or I don’t know if they’re supposed to take to go cups, but they’re taking them. And tonight it’s going to be interesting. I may be putting on my noise cancelling headphones and hoping that rolls by sooner than sooner than anyway.
Greg Owens 35:59
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It’ll be it’ll be interesting to see what unfolds in the in the coming months too, with things opening up the vaccine becoming more and more available to people more and more people taking it. You know, it’s it’s definitely looking like a brighter future and a brighter 2021. For sure.
Michael Yorker 36:17
Yeah. If anything, we are going to all get through this. And it’s going to be something we’re going to be talking about for decades to come. And a lot of good hopefully will come out of this.
Greg Owens 36:31
Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been a really great time getting to know you, Michael, and I look forward to at some point we can have some coffee or get a bite and you know, it’s somewhere in one of your favorite places in the city. That would be great.
Michael Yorker 36:44
Sounds good. I look forward to it.
Greg Owens 36:46
Alright, have a good day.
Michael Yorker 36:48
All right. Thanks.
Outro 36:59
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.