Primeau & Grose: Behind the Scenes

Yesterday we gave away tickets to the first caller that could correctly answer "On average how long do you wait for your last guest to arrive for Thanksgiving dinner?" The correct answer was 34 minutes. Normally I like to give people the tickets if they're close or give them a hint if they're not. Over the years I've never been able to win anything especially on radio so I really want the callers to win. Unfortunately for the callers we got... I was having a bad day.

As we approach the Edmonton Comedy Festival I'm finding myself answering the same questions over and over again from committee members or following up on tasks to find the person assigned the task has forgotten something or has done something we didn't ask them to do. I pull out my email to them or check the minutes of the meeting and determine I was very clear what needed to be done and yet we're now redoing the task because someone ignored a detail.

It all started with one of our venues suddenly stating that the room only held 85 rather than 130 because they hadn't taken into account tables. You pretty much NEED tables in a  bar. We worked it out but I just couldn't believe that was a detail you could possibly miss especially after we had sold 130 tickets to 2 of the shows there.  Then it was the emcee at the Young Guns Competition forgetting to bring his list of announcements that we handed to him the week before and emailed to him the day of the show. Rather than ask what the announcements were he made them up giving out completely incorrect information on shows, dates, prices, the titles of judges, our website address and the prize for the Young Guns winner. Next it was our graphics artist replying to an email from me asking for a 2' x 3' poster with "What size would you like it to be?"  Finally it was the tutor at our house asking Madi what was her best subject and her replying "You mean after math?" Since he was there to tutor her in math that answer makes no sense... clearly math is not in the running to be one of her best subjects.

By the time we went to give away tickets I wasn't willing to accept 35, 34.1 or 34.2 as answers. I just finished saying it was 34. I'm sorry if you didn't win but in a world that doesn't give out zeros... I decided to do it.