Last week Riot Act had one of it's first rentals. A group of young professionals had rented out the show room for lunch and paid for a comic to entertain them while they eat. It was on a weekday afternoon, which is normally not a profitable time for a comedy club, so this was a great way for a little extra profit.
Needless to say, it was a little rocky. We had over 200 young professionals, all very eager to explore Riot Act, but all very hungary. Unfortunately, without thinking of the congestion, we had set up our show room with one buffet line. This was the issue.
As the intern, I helped the everyone set up the room, and then greeted people as they entered. It was about 20 minutes into greeting that I noticed people were leaving especially fast. I met to talk to my manager to discover that the line to get food was winding all around the room. People were getting fed up with waiting and decided that they could get their food elsewhere.
At the time, there was very little we could do. We apologized to the young professionals and promised there would be enough food for them. We couldn't offer refunds, since they hadn't actually paid us. We just tried to be as friendly and receptive as possible and handed out Buy One Get One tickets for our comedy shows.
This showed me, that even big companies make mistakes. This was not an event that was thrown together last minute, but it was one small detail that was not thought through and it threw the whole even off. Next time we will obviously have two, or even three, buffet lines. Until then, we will just learn from our mistakes and hope we don't offend anyone enough for them not to give us a second chance.
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