Epic Fail

I have a friend (we’ll call him “Mr. Great”) who jokes about living with an event planner. He considers it a blessing and a curse. As planners we usually end up with a basement of event supplies; votive candle holders, folding tables and chairs, a variety of linens, dishware, flatware, fake flowers, clipboards, and checklists. We pride ourselves on being organized, creating our event binders, printing documents, color-coding tabs, and triple-checking every detail. Those who live with us end up learning a thing or two whether they want to or not.

As event planners we are always critiquing other events. We can’t help it. We do it to the point that we want to know who did the rigging and how much it cost, which photographer they used, what their experience was like with their convention services manager, and if we can get the number of the caterer. This guy has ended up doing the same on more than one occasion. As Mr. Great attended an event recently, he experienced the worst type of event… one planned by someone who thought all they had to do to plan an event was turn on the lights and make coffee. Clearly little to no thought had gone into planning this event.

There was a location, registration process, vague agenda, and a couple of speakers. It sounded like that’s as far as the host got. Poor Mr. Great arrived at the venue to discover that in order to enter the event everyone had to be strip-searched by the TSA (not really, but an extensive person and bag search of everyone was performed). You can only imagine how long that took, and because this wasn’t communicated to the attendees ahead of time nobody planned to arrive early and the host didn’t account for this time in the schedule. As a result, the program was off to a 30+ minute delay right from the beginning.

Once inside, nobody knew where to go. This was a large office building and there were no signs directing the attendees to their meeting space. When Mr. Great finally stumbled upon the right room, it looked like the host had not thought about seating, so instead of having everyone sit on the floor, they ran around around the building grabbing every office and desk chair they could find. Some had arms, some had wheels, some were padded, some had hard seats, some were missing head rests, and others resembled stools. Schizophrenic.

After starting an hour late, the next issue was that the promised wifi did not exist which didn’t matter because there was nothing to put a computer on. The agenda which looked like it was made on an old-school ditto machine didn’t list times. Nobody had any idea how long the sessions were, when they’d receive a break, or when lunch was. Because the event started late, nobody could find the room, and the agenda wasn’t specific anyway, the host attempted to make up time and plow through the schedule without stopping. No breaks.

As a result, lunch was a working lunch. To make matters worse (as if it could get worse) lunches were pre-ordered individually from two different restaurants. Instead of coordinating delivery of the meals, the only assistant helping with the event ran back and forth between the venue and the restaurants, grabbing meals and dropping them off. So half of the group was able to eat early and the other half had to wait. And, in true fashion when you do individual meals without ordering extra food or having a backup plan, there were people without food and others with the wrong meal. What a mess.

As Mr. Great continued to relay his event disaster, I could feel my blood pressure rising. I shifted into problem-solving mode off and on at least 100 times while he told his story. I don’t know where the event was, who was the host, or any other specifics, but trust me…planning a meeting is not as easy as just dreaming it up and inviting people.

Shout out to “Steve the Great” for enduring this horrific chain of events and living to tell about it. Let this be a cautionary tale for those “weekend event warriors” who don’t fully grasp the complexity of what meeting and event professionals do. In 2022 alone, the party and event planning industry represented $5.6 billion in revenue.¹ The number of planners, venues, and suppliers involved is mind-blowing. I recommend that everyone planning an event at least consult with a Certified Meeting Professional if you don’t have one on your staff. You will truly benefit from this in the long run.

Have you had an event disaster story? Share it here or send me an email! Hearing others’ stories is so helpful.

Let’s see how many people we can share this blog with! Share it on your social media and with your friends!

1. As reported by http://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics.

Special thanks to Steve the Great and Joanne Dennison for the content for this blog!