If I ever volunteer to do another event for anything anywhere, shoot me. Really. I. am. so. DONE.
After last year's carnival difficulties, I spent a lot of time thinking about the things that went wrong and how to fix them. I divided up all the responsibilities into areas and asked people to sign up. Did they? Nope.
Then I had areas of responsibility for the carnival itself; geographic places my helpers were supposed to be. It was a beautiful plan. Each person would cover one area or group of booths and make sure they had people running them. Theoretically nobody would have to work more than one shift, and there would be a drawing for the people who DID work for a gift certificate. Did we get to use the plan? Ha!
Because, see, it was drizzling all day. The weather was supposed to be a 60% chance of rain. That fell to 40% on the day, but still, it looked like we were going to get wet. I had to make the call: rainy day plan or original plan. At 3:00 (with the carnival starting in three hours) I called it Rainy Day. But where was I when I had to make this call? In the car, picking up the generator and the bread. Why would the chair be doing that, you ask? Because there was NO ONE ELSE to do it.
I had to go get the Sam's Club items we needed.
I had to go pay for the train we rented.
I had to go shop for Silent Auction Basket items.
I had to go order the meat.
I had to order the generator and pick it up.
I had to pay for the light towers.
I had to get the buns.
I had to trek down to my house with a half hour left to start time and GET THE BOOTHS OUT OF MY GARAGE.
My husband had to WALK HOME to bring the Balloon Arch to school for the picture booth.
And I had to go to the grocery store myself, after the carnival began, to pick up the whipped cream for the Pie Toss. Which, by the way, did not get ordered for me, and I had to wait while the manager pulled what he had from the shelves and deep-discounted it for me.
Knowing what had to be done on the day of carnival, I had a posterboard list posted in the lounge where people could just look and SEE what had to be done. Did anyone use it? Of course not. So many things were just left undone. One whole booth was scrapped because I couldn't get down to the house and pick it up on a second run. I kept saying it might suck, but with the awesome '50s theme decorations (including 3' high records hanging from the gym ceiling) it would sure suck pretty.
We had to move things indoors rapidly, and people totally lost focus after that. I had to go and personally place each booth's supplies where there were supposed to go, because other people were still futzing with decorations or blowing up balloons. The radios we had donated to us (Item #4 on the list: Test Radios - not done) didn't work and couldn't all be synched on the same channels. So my cell phone rang nonstop for seven hours.
I had a system to track the popularity of booths. Out the window when my co-chair (who knew this!) told people to just stuff all the tickets into one bag. I now have no idea how much each booth made.
I had a Jail built, which I now own, and had a Jailhouse Rock booth started. In it, the Sheriff was supposed to be arresting people and making them sit in jail. They could pay a bail (in tickets) or sing. In the meantime, kids would be allowed to sing without being locked up. No; instead the jail people charged each kid to go in there and sing. Yes, the lines were long all night, but the concept was totally lost.
The pie toss I replaced the dunking booth with was a smash. Literally. But someone forgot the hose, and that was ick.
The volunteer check-in booth was a disaster (because people who don't go to meetings don't know what's going on) so we are sure we missed half the people who volunteered.
The Silent Auction system I worked out to get us out early that night failed miserably, once again, because people DO NOT LISTEN.
One thing did go right. The
Hamster Ball Races were a huge success, and drew crowds all night long. Oh, and I sold pom poms for a huge profit, which nobody thought to do before. Hit Two.
The biggest complaint I got was that the lines were too long. Well, people, when there are more volunteers to work, you can have more booths and shorter lines. A plague on those people who came and spent all night with their kids, whining and complaining about how it was run, and who didn't lift a finger. Meanwhile the Little Critter was completely on her own for four hours, totally unsupervised at 7 years old. At least everyone knows her and tried to keep an eye on her, but both JJ and I were way too busy to take her around.
Here's the one great piece of news. It looks like we grossed about what we normally do, near $9,000. But it also looks like expenses will be several thousand dollars less than previous years. So I did a carnival on the cheap that raised almost the same dollars as other years, meaning a huge jump in the profitability. We're really close to making the goal, and the next few weeks will bring in the final numbers. I am glad abot that, but there's one thing more important than any of that:
I'm done. And I'm term-limited, so I can't do it again!
Now, what are you going to do when I get the itch to plan anything, even a birthday party, in the future? Repeat after me:
SHOOT FISH.
(
Contrary should, given her
extensive experience in firearms handling, be one you can call on to help with this.)
