Submitted by ops on
One purpose of this blog is to give readers a feel for what the office furniture industry is like. At Bay Area Installations, one of our frequent tasks is to do what is called "bumping" furniture. It's not rocket science, but it does take some finesse.
As you might have guessed, to "bump" is the industry term for moving furniture a little to the left or right. Sometimes this is just to expose an electrical outlet on the wall - sometimes because you need to have an extra foot in an aisleway. You can bump a single desk, you can bump a whole series of cubicles. The techniques are different, the basic idea is the same.
So how does this give you a flavor of the office furniture industry? It highlights where we are on the degree of specialization. Some industries - say, medicine - require a very high degree of specialization. Some are much more simple - all have their own subtlties (if anyone reading has dug ditches, you'd be surprised at the subtlties involved). Office furniture installation and service is unique in that it combines high precision movements with blunt force.
If you're installing a standard l-shape desk it comes in two pieces - the desk and the return. Attaching the pieces is simply a matter of using flat brackets and screws to join the pieces together. The subtlty comes in making the seam between the worksurfaces as narrow and straight as possible. This is where the contrast comes in. It takes a great amount of strength to hold the pieces together just right, but it also take the dexterity to do so while at the same time operating a drill and handling hardware. So again - contrast between precision movements and blunt force.
A "bump" is the same idea. You can't just push recklessly - the furniture will most likely not move. Neither can you get away with half effort as moving a large piece of furniture requries you to exert strength. A 'bump' requires a perfect combination of both - typically you have to lift the furniture just enough so that it is moveable - usually it is still almost touching the floor or very lightly touching the floor. Then, while holding this position, you have to exert - not a push exactly - more like a lien to the direction you want to go, and you rely on inertia and gravity to do the work for you. Congrationlations, you just bumped the stations four inches back.
Office furniture requires a perfect balance of precision and brute force. At Bay Area Installations, we have thirty years of experiencing cultivating our practice of both.
PS - this isn't officially part of our "learning the lingo" series, but you can click here and here to see articles that describe other furniture industry terms.