One day, it would be nice if customers would get over the perception that we are just sitting there, twiddling our thumbs, doing nothing but waiting on them to come in with a banner they need by in the morning. Ill bend over backwards to help a customer, but why do they wait until the very last minute to plan a big function and the last thing they go to get is the sign for the event. I dont know why Im griping though, cause its happened ever since I got into this business over 25 years ago. Why would it change now?
I think a lot of it is that we do live in an instant world. Instant coffee, a full meal at McD's in 3 minutes, ready made products off the shelf, microwave dinners, press a button and the photocopier will have a reproduction in 5 seconds, send an email or fax and it is there instantly.
Why shouldn't custom made products be any different, just press the button!
A while back I came in on a Saturday afternoon and noticed several messages on my machine. The lady left a message, she did not understand why we were not open and she needed to order t-shirts for her family reunion. The next message was her again, she said we needed to call her back immediately because her reunion was starting at 11 am. The third message was her threatening to go to Kinkos to get her shirts made if we dont call her back immediately.
Well, I hope the Kinkos thing worked out well for her.
People really dont realize how much is involved in organizing events of any size. I help organize multible large high school band events every year, just for my own enjoyment and to help out our community. The easiest one is the Upper State Marching Band Championship because the state officials basically hand it all to us on a platter. They arrange for the judges (I have to pick them up at the airport), they provide the trophies, they provide the event rules and even the tickets. We supply labout 150 volunteers, a cleanup crew, police security, a medic, an annoucer, and concessions. Due to the planning we do months in advance, the event runs nearly flawlessly.
So a couple of weeks after hosting the Uperstate competition, I travel 3 hours to the State Championship (my group was 2nd place by the way), and stand in line waiting for someone to showup with the tickets (which were autmatically mailed to the people hosting that event). Seems no one knows who has the tickets. Eventually the ticket guy shows up and I purchase a ticket and go to the entry gate.
Then I am delayed at the entry gate because someone had to go to Walmart and buy a magic marker to "stamp" peoples hands with for readmission. When the hand stamper got back, he litterally drew a smily face on my hand!!!
Their $6 programs consisted of about 10 lettersize sheets of paper stapled together, and instead of including the nice little writeup about every band, they were a little confused and put each bands registration form, along with all of the comments which were supposed to be kept confidential - like "we will have 4 busses and two trailers and a truck, we have 160 bandmembers plus a few flunkies who will be toting the props, we really liked the spot you put us in last time because it was not all rutted out like the rest of your parking area".
On a upbeat note, they did sell out of food before noon so their concession people got the rest of the day off and the local restaunts made a killing (this was a 12 hr event). I'm sure that a lack of planning didn't have anything to do with running out of food. And they had lots of event tshirts left over, seems that spectators just did not get to excited about paying $20 for the beautiful design, all Arial font with black ink. So they will have plenty of rags for their next event.
It is obvious that event was planned in the minutes before the crowd of 6,000+ people started showing up.
