That Freezing Morning When Everything Broke
It was a Tuesday in January 2024, and I was the first one in the office. The building felt like a walk-in freezer. I went to flip the thermostat, and... nothing. The display on our Vaillant boiler was flashing a dreaded F28 error code. I'd seen it before—it usually means a gas supply or ignition issue, but in that moment, I felt the weight of 40 employees who were about to walk into an icebox.
When I took over purchasing in 2020, I inherited a mess of vendor relationships. We had five different suppliers for different things—one for the boiler, one for the AC, one for the water cooler. It was chaos. But after 5 years of managing these relationships, I've learned a few things about keeping things running. That morning, though, I was about to learn a lot more.