Andover, MA- As Phillips Academy students returned to campus earlier this month and began unpacking their dorm rooms, all across campus, students noticed something was missing. “I just thought the storage company was late. I never thought they wouldn’t give me my stuff back. That didn’t seem like storage. That seemed more like stealing,” said an Andover student returning for his senior year. SmartMovers, the company that handles most of the Academy’s storage needs during the summer months has had a great deal of difficulty delivering items to paying customers at the start of this school year. Many students have yet to receive their futons, bed sheets and clothes. Mark Butkis, a representative from SmartMovers, spoke in a phone interview about the situation. “It’s really unfortunate what’s happening on the Andover campus, and we just want everyone to know that here at SmartMovers, we’re working hard to get everyone their things as quickly as possible,” Butkis said. When asked why it was taking more than a week for students to receive their items, Butkis responded, “Well, we’ve pretty busy with a project we’ve been working on all summer. We’re proud to announce that we’ve opened a furniture store in Methuen. It’s really taken up a lot of our time and resources in the past few weeks.” In Methuen, at the grand opening the SmartMovers Furniture Outlet, customers noticed an unusual amount of crappy dorm furniture for sale right in the showroom. “It looked like a lot of used furniture,” said one customer. The store has in stock over 75 used futons, a few office-style swivel chairs, and lots of sealed boxes marked ‘Paul Revere 216’ or ‘Hannah’s School Stuff’ for example. Found among the many shoppers in the store were a few Andover students themselves. The store seemed to cater directly to their styles, as comments such as “I have that same chair” and “that is my chair” could be heard amidst the hustle and bustle of the store’s grand opening celebration. A unique element in the store was located near the front of the space, where a fully decorated room had been assembled to give shoppers an idea of how the pieces in the store could mix. Oddly, the furniture included styles remarkably similar to the Academy’s dorm-issued wooden desk and chest of drawers, and even included a dark green window shade and an Andover flag on the wall. Butkis, rubbing his hands together and dressed in a plaid brown blazer and burnt orange tie, said “This is really great, isn’t it?” After shoppers enjoyed a cake in honor of the new furniture outlet, Butkis announced that SmartMovers would begin offering storage for computers, printers and digital cameras as part of new company policy. He then announced that SmartMovers would be opening a “Best-Buy type retail store in the near future, with items ranging from computers to digital cameras. Oh, and printers.”
