Blog

Help Us Help You

September 25th, 2023 by Kenneth Abrahams

Fall semester is in full swing and that is both good and bad. It is great to be back on campuses with full compliments of students as opposed to the summer months when there are smaller numbers of students, faculty, and staff. Make no mistake, we love providing speakers and entertainment for orientations and working with Orientation Leaders and incoming first year students and staff, but here is a different energy when all the students come back. Often during orientations, first year students are a bit shy or perhaps reserved is a better term, as they take everything in and try to figure this “college” thing out. Energy levels ramp up when everyone is back. It is easy to both hear and see the excitement as friends reconnect after 3 months away, or even longer. Yes, it is fun being back.

That said, being back on campus reminds us of some of the challenges we face as a company working with these institutions. Now, mind you, many schools do a great job and programs run smoothly. When we arrive, our rider has been followed to the letter. Power is at our location along with tables, trash cans, chairs, and other necessities required to do our jobs properly. There are often smiling students or staff members available to assist with load in, set up, and during the program. Believe it or not there are students that actually volunteer to work with the FUN crew because they have worked with us before and had a great time. Those are the dream jobs or at least the dream start to the jobs.

Other jobs start a bit rockier. One of the programs that was a late minute add to the schedule was an event that was scheduled from 2P – 5P. As is our custom, and what was in the rider, our staff showed up at 1PM eager and ready to set up only there were no tables at the location. Following our protocol, said staff member called their contact only to be told the tables were on the way to the location and so were the volunteers. Tables for the event showed up at 2PM the exact time the event was supposed to start. Without bending the space time continuum or hiring the Flash to set the program up there was no way that event was going to start on time. No surprise, it didn’t.

If this were an isolated incident, it wouldn’t be the subject of this or any other blog. Unfortunately, this fall there have been many programs that didn’t start on time, run smoothly, or have the desired outcome that either we or the client wanted. In all fairness, sometimes it wasn’t the fault of the client at all. Facilities has dropped the ball on more than one occasion. Tables ordered weeks before need 2 or 3 phone calls on the day of the event to get them over to the site. Hoses to fill dunk tanks are either not delivered or delivered without the key required to get the water turned on at the point where the hose is connected. Trash cans are left at the site with no liners, or they weren’t emptied from the previous event. Nothing like having the trash can at your station filled the garbage from the BBQ held the night before. Yes, we know that at the beginning of the year there are dozens of events and gatherings that require support and people get tired and a bit cranky.

Some of you reading this may think that this piece is directed at you and that I am being critical of your event. Sorry to disappoint, but everything mentioned above has happened at more than one job to one degree or another. It is hard for us to do our jobs properly without some support from the client. Students are eager for the events to begin at this time of year. It isn’t easy trying to keep a Stuff a Bear crowd at bay when the tables arrive 10 minutes before the program is supposed to start.

Help us help you. We all want the same thing; a smooth and successful event. It is never a good situation if our clients, their guests, or our staff get stressed out and wind up on edge. Yes, people working for us should be able to control the situation and their temper, but it is infinitely harder when hordes of students are rushing your location or shouting at you. That situation is unpleasant for everyone.  

As I said we all want the event to go well and students, staff, and clients to be happy. Here are a few tips that may help:

1. Make sure to read our rider well in advance of the event. If you didn’t get or see the rider, please let us know and we will send it over again. Our website also has a list of items that might be required to run the event. It is not complete, but it will get you in the ballpark.    
2. If your school or company has their own contract, we are happy to sign it but make sure that you incorporate our rider into it.
3. When you look over the rider, if there is something that you can’t provide, please let us know as soon as you can.
4. Try and have the area set up before we arrive. Some places actually put signs on the table to let us know exactly where we will be located. This is really helpful.
5. If you are the contact for an event, make sure that you are available at our arrival time and that your cell phone is on, and you are able to answer it. Schedules do change and if you are no longer able to meet our staff when they arrive, please let our office know who the updated contact is and what their cell number and preferred pronouns are.
6. Prior to every event, our office sends an email confirming the event. Many people never respond or simply reply all set, whether they are or are not. Before replying to that email, double check with your group and facilities to make sure you are, in fact, all set.    
7. Please note that if you don’t have volunteers to assist us that may impact the amount of product that we are able to produce. We ask for volunteers in order to keep your costs down and in some cases, we simply don’t have additional staff to send more people.
8. Let us know after the program if something didn’t go well. These are never easy conversations to have, but it helps us improve our service and provide additional training for our staff. If you are concerned during the event and you need additional support from us to help correct a problem, we have an emergency phone that is staffed 24/7 and whoever is on call will be happy to assist.

As I said earlier, we want all our events to go smoothly. It is disheartening to hear when things go awry. Like you, we put a lot of man hours into every event and our goal is 100% satisfaction. Yes, we know that may never happen because everyone has a bad day, and we are all human. Wishing you all the best at your future events.

About the author

Ken Abrahams has worked at events for more than 40 years, yep, he is old, and during that time has worked events on all ends of the spectrum, the good, the bad and the ugly. Luckily, most of his events fall on the good side of the ledger.

To find out more about the company go to our website www.funent.com you can also go to this link to sign up for our newsletter which comes out about 6 times a year    https://funent.com/subscribe-to-the-funny-pages/.  Our newsletter will tell you more about the company and the products and services we offer as well as some games, things to do, and the occasional cooking tip.