Well I have learned a lesson today. And that is, when ordering food for a meeting, think 'abundant' not 'enough'.
There was an Executive Assistant here who thought 'enough' when ordering for a very high-level meeting. It turned out there wasn't enough food...and she got summarily canned. When you work for the COO or the CEO or both, you do not screw up like that...not without consequences that, shall we say, have a large impact on your immediate financial future.
As I have mentioned, I have that meeting today for about 25 people for a high, high profile prospect. They had breakfast in...I ordered it from my favorite continental breakfast vendor, because they do a really nice presentation and their pastry is top-notch. And they are uber-reliable. Not surprisingly, hardly anyone partook of breakfast...pity for them, because their stuff is awesome. I even had the ginormous pastries cut in half so no one need fear looking gluttonous or silly while trying to manage cutting a pastry in half with a butter knife and screwing up their manicure. Still, virtually no takers. It's that carb thing.
That's alright, the abundance of leftovers allowed me to earn some brownie points by informing the executive assistants that there was a bunch of leftover stuff in the breakroom. Plus I just like being nice to people. :) Sometimes. Well...alright...I'm a pushover...after all, I was even nice to Adminzilla.
Back to the topic.
Neither I nor the organizer of the meeting expected there to actually be 25 people for lunch. He had pointed out to me when we were trying to figure the headcount that people would be coming and going. But, lo and behold, when I brought lunch in, there were 25 peeps in the room. It looked like the prospect had just started grilling our people. Anyway, my VP came over and counted the lunches, then counted heads, then mentioned to me there are exactly 25 lunches and exactly 25 people. I knew we'd need to order more when he said that. So I happily complied and got more lunches from the vendor. Supervisor drove, praise the Lord, because I am driving the Ugly Duckling today. :o( After all, the Cherub is in residence today and we can't have the Cherub riding in a work truck, perish the thought.
When my VP was discussing the lunch provisions with me, I felt the Taint of Error starting to cling to me. If I didn't hurry up and fix that problem, the Taint of Error was going to stick, so I put on my happy face and dealt with it. No admonitions from Supervisor this time, thank God.
Lesson learned: order more, not less, no matter what. Better to have leftovers than not enough, even if you theorize that there will likely be less people.
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