The Disaster of Unplanned Collaboration

I just witnessed an organisational disaster. One of the other research groups ordered a very large, very heavy table. The table is 2 x 1.5 m and 400 kg; apparently it's part of a very expensive microscope.

In a disappointingly predictable fashion, there was no plan to bring this table into the building. The delivery truck nor the building staff had had furnished moving equipment. There is no ground floor entrance to the building; there was no plan to bring it up the stairs, no appropriate moving equipment and no one supervising to prevent damage to the new equipment or injury to those moving it. The person responsible for the order simply rounded up the available men and asked them to carry it in.

This is the most astounding bit of stupidity and organisational incompetence that I've seen in a long, long time. I found out after that the reason there was no plan was because the person who bought the table did not want to pay the extra 400€ to have it installed. Granted, that's an expensive installation, but given that this is part of a very expensive piece of lab equipment (worth many thousands of Euros), it seems to me that the installation cost would be well worth its value as insurance. Had the table been broken or someone injured, the cost would far outstrip the 400€. In fact, wasting forty minutes of the fifteen people gathered up from around the building probably cost more than 400€.

Thankfully, nothing went horribly wrong and the table did get into the building, though this is purely by luck.

All that was needed was a little planning. We needed the proper moving equipment and direction. Considering that this a site with many labs, with many large, heavy pieces of equipment, there would be some readily available resources for moving and installing equipment. But, apparently there isn't, or, the person responsible for purchasing the table was simply to much of an imbecile to ask for such resources in the first place.