I Had To Ask, Didn't I?
Topic: Math Club
To make all the ice chests work, I went to Albertson's at like 7:30am to go get some ice. Imagine my surprise when I find that there are only 7lb bags left. Not a single 20 pounder was in the freezer. They had like 2 freezer doors stacked to about chest height yesterday around 2:30. Fortunately there was a high-up employee near by who noticed the water on the floor, called someone to pick it up and yelled to someone else if there were any more bags of ice. I asked if they had any more and they said yes so I asked for two. Phew, avoided that crisis.
So I put the ice in the chest (barely fit) and drive onto campus thinking there wouldn't be that many people there yet at 7:45. Wrong. I had to park in the sports complex lot and walk all that crap down. Fortunately, about half way there, Shannon saw me on her way in for the Democrat club and gave me a lift. Phew.
So I take some time getting everything stored in the book room and then go outside to check on the booth and try to decide what to bring out first. To my dismay, the wind had managed to blow half the tarp off and part of the screen. So I go back to the book room to get the staple gun. I also noticed that nobody was setting up next to us on the right. Fortunately, around this time, Jay shows up to help out. Then some Open House committee person shows up to talk to us about the electricity issue. Alright, I was a little short with her but they did screw us over on that by not notifying us and told her so. She said that for Open House, I have to allow some flexability. Anyway, they said they were working on getting electricity for some other club near us and if they can get it to work for them than they can get it for us too. Yeah, we were a fucking after thought but I said fine. During this conversation, the staple gun was refusing to work for me. Then some Open House Main Stage people show up saying we never signed a waiver to perform on Main Stage. I let Jay take care of that while I went back to the book room to get the other staple gun. Jay fortunately got the booth back together while I got some stuff out. And then we both we upstairs in the Math building to go borrow a table (since the ones under the stairs had already been swiped). We moved that downstairs and then I went to go pick up the pies.
Despite arriving exactly at 9, I had to wait a few minutes before someone could actually help me. He took me and the cart down to the bake shop to get the pies. They had apparently just started to put them in boxes. Good thing I got there when I did because they were putting them in boxes for 6. I said I needed them individualized so me and the guy had to actually make the 25 boxes, load them and label them. I left Lighthouse around 9:30. It was 9:45 by the time I got back to the booth. By that point, Rebecca and Dusti had showed up and the booth set-up was nearly complete for both spots. Between the fridge and the 3 ice chests we had out, we managed to get all the creams, one apple and one cherry outside with us. The rest of the fruit pies I put in the book room. I was actually excited because at like 9:55, people were already at the books and shirts and buying stuff.
At 10 when it became evident that no club was coming next to us, we realized how crappy of a location we were in. The Open House booths basically go in a U shape around building 38 and we at the top of that U with only two booths to our left and no one to our right. Bascially, we got the least amount of foot traffic. By the time people got to us, they had already eaten and were full. And because it happened to be the hottest day of the quarter, no one was interested in getting a sweatshirt.
Using a technicality, we lowered our price to be 1 slice for $2 or 2 slices for $3. Our technicality was that on the price sheet, I had said "slices of pie," not "slice of pie" so I could put as many slices for $3 as I wanted. No one caught us on it anyway. That only helped business a little bit. We tried to tag onto the Materials Engineering's free nitrogen ice cream saying they could get their pie a la mode. Around 1, I counted the pie money to be about $88. Shit. So Rena and I quickly made some $1 off coupons and I went out to advertise the pies to where the crowds were and gave out coupons. I avoided using the coupons when Open House people were around. I went back when I ran out to grab some more. There was some effect but not a lot. So I went out again. Around 2:30 I came back and had a break. Rena said that business had picked up. At 3, we were offically allowed to lower our prices so we took it down to $1/slice and started to sell whole pies. I even offered people to hit me with the pie if they bought the slice. I had one guy take me up on it. He bought 2 slices and gave one to his friend to shove in my face. It was actually kind of refreshing and the whipped cream was good. Then I went around with a lot of pie on my face to see if anyone else would take me up on my offer. I went back to the booth and cleaned up a bit and then Bridget came by. I managed to convince her to hit me with pie too. I cleaned up after that and then we started to take down the booth. Emily stayed for a bit and helped out. After that it was just me and Jay.
Wow, breaking down both booths took a long time. Two and a half hours actually since it was just the two of us. In the end, we had 2 whole apple, 2/3 apple, 5/6 cherry and one whole cherry left over. When all was said and done, I didn't leave campus until like 6:50 or so. I then went directly to South House to return Steve's cooler and to hopefully sell some pie. Andrew took a slice of cheery, Steve bought the whole cherry and Matt bought a whole apple. I gave Steve the 2/3 apple as a thank you for the cooler (okay, mainly because I didn't want to deal with it). So I took home a whole apple and 2/3 cherry. I was thinking about trying to sell some to my neighbors but my feel hurt too much.
So then I came home and counted up what we made. After taking $60 back that I fronted for change and the $140 it cost us to get the pies, we only made $74 today. We did make a lot at the book sale end but then again we had no way of knowing from what. [We interrupt this journal entry with some much needed sleep. zzzzz...And now back to the entry.] I'm pretty sure that we didn't sell any sweatshirts which is what we really needed to sell. In the end, we ended up grossing $499.50. I'll be donating 50? to make it an even $500. Which is good since that's
how much I was expecting. Although I honestly think we would have done a lot better had our booth been almost anywhere than where it had been. Although if we can get everything donated for the social and only spend about $30 on the EOY BBQ, we'll just be broke instead of in debt. I'll have to get an official statement again on Monday and do these calculations with the real numbers.
celebratory
bright
don't ask
blue
surprised
irritated