I'm in the middle of an event this week. Registration went smoothly for the participants at the hotel on Sunday and early Monday morning I was at the event space loading PowerPoints and waiting for everyone to arrive. By the time it was 8:10 a.m. I started to get worried that I hadn't seen the bus arrive from the hotel. At that same time, I got a call from my client at the hotel. "Danielle I'm standing here and there's no bus." My worst nightmare had come to fruition. 

I called the bus company and asked about where my bus was. "Let me check on that for you hold on." My blood was boiling. After an extended hold the man said, "Ma'am it looks like the order you placed never went through to dispatch." ... Silence...

"Excuse me?" Then I loose it. "I need a bus NOW! YOU'VE GOT TO BE [expletive] KIDDING ME!! This is going to mess up our entire schedule and this is going to put our day 45 minutes behind... This is absolutely unacceptable." He took my yelling with grace and told me he would have a bus there in 25 minutes.

I took a deep breath and called my client to update him. I let him know I was less than pleased with the bus company. I told him that I ripped them a new one, but that they were going to do what they could to get everyone there and that my staff is already on their way with alternative transportation. My client took the news well, better than I had when I learned of it.

Thirty minutes of waiting felt like an eternity. But eventually, everyone arrived. We adjusted the schedule for the day and shorted the lunch. All in all we survived. 

The next morning I was at the hotel by 7:30 a.m. and joined my clients for breakfast. "You don't trust the bus company?" my client asked.

"HECK NO!" I said. No one could blame me. It was a service fail that wasn't my fault, but was my problem. And although we hate when stuff like this happens, such is life and so often the case in the event industry. You plan for everything and adapt to the things that go awry.

I let everyone know that if that's the worst thing that happened all week we would be just fine. I repeated my event mantra like it was my meditation that morning, "We're not saving lives, we're not saving lives, we're not saving lives."