In one of my past (business) lives I was the marketing manager for a regional company that did A LOT of trade shows…about 50 a year.  Most of them were small, requiring only a few pieces of equipment.  And those weren’t bad…

But then there were the “big” shows…the “nothing can go wrong” shows…the ones where we had 20′ x 40′ booths that requiring building truss, hanging projectors, plasma displays, and SMART Boards, setting up a conference room display with video conferencing systems, running wires, dealing with power issues, missing cables, and staff that weren’t interested in helping set up and tear down the booth…but they sure wanted the sales!

Many of these shows were back to back during “the season,” so we would leave on Monday, set up Tuesday, show Wednesday, Thursday, and half of Friday…then tear it down, move it out, and spend enough time at home to do laundry before leaving for the next show.

These big shows took ALL DAY to set up.  And yes, we did it ourselves.  It was EXHAUSTING!

So when me and my team arrived in San Antonio to set up for a show one morning, we were greeted by our freight rep who told us our booth shipment had NOT arrived!

AACK!  Now what?  We don’t have time for mistakes!

Well…

Since our rep assured us he was “on it” and was going to get our booth there that day — NO MATTER WHAT — we decided to take the opportunity to bond as a team.  The three of us played tourist in San Antonio, with our giant 3′ stuffed crawfish (aka “The Ass”) in tow.   We took pictures of us at the Alamo, with cannons, spending time on the Riverwalk…

In other words, we made the best of it.

We got to know each other on a personal level.  We bonded.

And we charged it all to our freight rep’s credit card. 🙂

Then, at 8 pm, we got the word that our booth shipment arrived.  We pulled an all-nighter setting up for the trade show the next day, played loud music in the otherwise empty convention center, ate pizza from our freight rep, and fueled up on coffee to power us through the show.

Exhausted?  Yes!  But we made great memories together.

I just wonder why I can’t find the photos…