So when you’re planning a Mega-Event, you’ve got a lot of moving parts to deal with: the venue, attendee registrations and swag, vendors, and any number of details that may turn out to be a pain in the butt. I was prepared for the possibility of a number of these things. The pain in the butt that I ended up getting was one I did not expect.
I’ve never seen a Mega that did not have side Events happening for days before and after. One of my and a number of my friends’ biggest complaints has always been that when we go to the side Events, the places we go; whether restaurants, bars, or wherever we end up hosted; always has terrible service. They are never prepared for an onslaught of cachers, for 50 or more people to show up at the same time to partake of their wares. For Texas Challenge, we made a concerted effort to ensure that this would not be the case. One person was designated Head of Events, and their job was to find venues for the side Events, and let them know what was going to happen and how many people to expect. This was done, and done well. Over the course of the year, meetings were made, relationships were formed, and expectations were given. We even presented multiple years of historical data to be able to give places an idea of how many people historically show at one of these Events. This way, they could staff up, have food and drink on hand, and otherwise be prepared for something they knew would happen at a certain time on a certain day. All this preparation, however, only works if they believe us.
Three Events into this Mega, it turns out that not a single one has.
Our first event on a Wednesday night was projected to be 60 to 70 people because historically it has lower attendance, mostly locals. Unfortunately, the restaurant only had two servers for the 60 people we claimed and their regular customers as well. That was inadequate to begin with. Unfortunately for them (and, by extension, us), 100 cachers showed up. There were so many cachers that we actually hit the occupancy limit. For a short period, I actually had to stand at the door, keeping some people from coming in until other people had left. I didn’t even eat dinner there. I never got to order. Luckily (?), the Girls did. At least an hour wait to have their orders taken, and at least 40 minutes to get salads. I can’t begin to guess how many other cachers had to wait or for how long. I have no doubt that there were some who did not even get food and ended up leaving for other places, which is exactly what we wanted to prevent in the first place.
Unfortunately, thanks to an unexpected emergency, I was not able to attend the second, an early morning coffee Event. I did however, receive reports afterward. Despite having talked to the manager and warned them, the staff had no clue that 50 some odd people would be dropping in on them at that hour in the morning. They were completely overwhelmed. Again, they (and by “they”, I mean the managers) did not believe.
The third Event? Relationships had been built with the owner. Promises that the restaurant would be closed, only available to us, had been given. Everything was ready and in place, or so we thought. When we arrived, we learned that the menu had changed without our knowledge. A buffet style set up had been made for us, but otherwise the restaurant was still open to the public. Consequently, about 50 cachers probably never went in the door. The ones who did had 30 or 40 minute wait times from the two servers who were there.
I can understand if you’re a business owner and some random person comes to you and says “Hey, I’m having a thing where 100 people are gonna show up and I need you to be ready for them”, you might be a little skeptical. What’s to stop any random person from saying something similar? But when someone comes to you, offers historical data, and consistently reminds you over the course of a year, don’t you think it would behoove the owners to believe someone so prepared? That seems to be a very long way to go for the sake of a joke.
All that said, the attendees seemed to enjoy themselves, so perhaps there was not a hit to their overall experiences. But I know. And I will probably never blame a Mega organizer for not properly preparing a side Event again.
Any yet, with all the things that went pear-shaped (there were others slightly more substantial than the Event issues), they didn’t stop us on the way to…
Geocaching While Black 