Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 February 2005 11:54:22
Hello there again,
The big thing we had has now finished. But I still have a story or two from last week I did not tell you as I was away for the weekend visiting the lovely one's family on their property in a rural area. But I am attempting to keep this blog pretty much just about my work adventures and will leave the romantic adventures of chops alone.
So the thing we had last week is so big it has spawned a charity fundraiser ball associated with it. The fundraiser aids a children's charity and is not organised by the organisers of the big thing but a separate event management company. A small note of interesting background is that the thing is run by a former floorie and the ball is run by a another former employee that was run out of the company fairly quick ( I will not go into further details on that one for my own safety and possible legal action ). Suffice to say the two organisers have not always seen eye to eye so there was a wee bit of tension about. To make things more complex the ball was event managed by one of our event managers (E.M) who is not known for a eye for detail. This is how a event works in my building. Sales gets the event into the building and then events does the preplanning and prepares a event order which is the paperwork. If it is not on the paper work it is not done. This is where we come in because sometimes the expectations of the client and what is listed on the event order are very different things. This may because they have worked in other buildings and have different experiences. A classic one happened with the ball. The ball being a charity event had a auction. On all the paper work the E.M did not have deliveries expected. The deliveries were not on the daily freight received email because they were so badly labelled. So when on Friday at 5.30 for a 6.30 start the event manager asked me about where the two pallets of freight was. He knew that he had not told me and volunteered to get the freight himself. But being a desk jockey is worse than me with a pallet jack. So he needed to be rescued. He normally would not do that but we had a run in earlier in the week where he left something to the last minute and expected me in the busyness of the three events I was looking after drop everything and pin up the table allocations he had on his desk all day and had not told me till half an hour before the event was to start and I had another event also needy and about to start and the big thing as well. I told him it was to late and thrust the velcro dots and told him to put it up. You may be thinking why do I the guy in the suit need to move the freight are there not people for that. The simple answer is no. The client can book a porter to move that sort of stuff. But a porter must have a minimum three hour call. So often there is no porter booked as was the case of 8 pallets the other week. And because there is no one else to do it lands on our shoulders. This E.M is also famous for not booking porters when there may be 14 pallets of wine to move which has happened to me twice with his events. The other handy thing was the event organiser did not turn up till 6pm for a 6.30 start and when she did she needed ribbon and wrapping paper for gifts for her presenters. She also did not have the table allocations for the floor plans and told me that they were with the E.M who denied he even had them. This caused chops to go into hyper drive and attempt to sort out these instant hurdles.
I have forgotten to mention that we had 10 " idle rock stars" turning up at the big thing at around the same time. They were there to do a signing at one of the stands. We had the plans for that all week. They were to turn up in our special persons car park and rush into a lift (because it is not very rock for you to see them get out of a car and they should always look like they magically appear) and into the special waiting room and then straight onto the stand. The organiser of the big things safety guy had liased with the security team of the rock stars and told our security of the plan as well. But the problem was no one had told the supervisor on the night of the plan. And when they did arrive they turned up in a 22 seat bus which would not fit in the car park. This left me with two pretty large problems to fix. I left it to security to sort out as I was busy upstairs making sure that the ball was all good. I was hoping that it would be all good and not go pear shaped.
But like all good things I managed to pull some favours from some departments to help everything work out smoothly like move the freight for me. I also managed to source some wrapping stuff which is pretty hard to do after 5pm in a building like mine. But I went behind enemies lines and performed a covert op. And at the end of the day everything smelt of roses. And the pop stars were safe as there was no huge crowd as was expected and the 100 or so teeny boppers scored signed posters. It was a bit of overkill they had 4 in their personal security team. But I did once know of a teeny bopper pop star that did a personal appearance at an event and for a 5 ft pop starlet had 4 burly personal security guards and wanted our security to make a "presence". I may come across a but anti pop music but the truth is I am and refuse to buy my nieces and nephews pop music for gifts. My no pop music policy is legendary amongst my friends and something I encourage for all of you.
But in the end it all ended nicely and near disasters were averted and the world was a better and safer place. Well at the least the house of chops is a safer and better place.
Till next time,
Chops