 This is my account of the worst group of staff I have ever managed and, possibly in the history of events. I’M SO GLAD I FINALLY GET TO TELL IT! To set the scene, this was a condom sampling program on a national concert tour/all-day festival two years ago. I was the sole manager for the program; living on a tour bus and setting up two small event sites (tents and tables) at each venue stop. In each market I would get a team of seven local sampling staff. This particular date was in Northern California at a large outdoor amphitheater.
The lead staff member of the local team called me a few days before the event to let me know he was bringing the entire staff with him and, to ask me if he and the rest of the team could show up early for the show (2pm), even though their shift didn’t start until 5pm. I had been having a heck of a time with staff no-shows so, I said that would be fine. They’d get a few hours to see the show and, I’d have all my staff already there at 5. At 2:30pm on the day of show, I met with the lead staff, Ross (not his real name), and the team (three guys, three girls). They showed up with mixed drinks in hand and had obviously been partying before they arrived. The event was still hours away and, I already had my first dilemma. This is not just one staff member drinking, this is the whole team! If I send them all home, I’d have 12,000 condoms to hand out by myself. I made several calls to everyone above me at the marketing company and left messages about my situation. Reluctantly, I decided to give them their passes after stressing they use their time to sober up and show up ready to work at 5. I also gave them the eternal lecture about sticky passes: do not stick the passes to your street clothes; once they have been stuck once, they will not stick again. Once they change into their uniforms, their passes would just fall off if they had already been used once. At 5pm I met them back at the designated spot. They had obviously continued to drink during the 2 and ½ hours since I last saw them. Several had attached the passes to their street clothes, as directed NOT to do. 6 of the 7 workers were at various levels of intoxication (three sitting exhausted on the ground with blank looks on their faces). Only one staff did not smell of alcohol. At this point, I decided to go forward with the program since sampling would have been a bust with only one staff member. This was one of those concert tours where just about every concertgoer was wasted so, it wasn’t like sending them into Wimbledon or a Celine Dion concert. With no real attractive options, I herded the group to the back of the tractor/trailer semi where we usually get into uniform and fill bags. While passing out the uniforms, Ross pulled me aside and told me that one of the males had a fake (artificial) leg and, for this reason, he couldn’t wear the shorts. I was in the middle of telling him that was fine when the man (who was the most intoxicated member of the group) came up cursing about the shorts and showed me his fake leg by yanking his jeans up knee high. After I finished telling the guy that was fine, Ross then pleaded with me not to wear his shorts, either! I told him that this was the gig; he had no fake leg so, he had no choice. When I checked on the other two guys getting dressed outside, they were trying to wear their street clothes under the shorts by rolling their jeans up as high as possible (picture a pair of jeans crammed up above your knees). It looked so ridiculous; I told them there was no way they were going to sample unless they wore the uniform and, only the uniform. After 5 minutes of back and forth, they finally put on the uniform. In hindsight, it is apparent why they wanted to keep their street clothes on, and it wasn’t because they were afraid they were going to lose their stuff like they said. Soon after, one of the two guys realized he had lost his sticky pass somewhere, never to be found again. When checking with the girls, two had put on the uniform but had pulled their panty strings/bikini bottoms all the way up out of their shorts on top of their hips. I told them they needed to tuck their underwear/bikini strings into their shorts. The third girl would not change out of her black miniskirt (which had her sticky pass irrevocably attached to the vinyl) into her shorts. I knew if I gave in to her, everyone else would have renewed the uniform protests. I pulled Ross aside and told him that his group needed to shape up dramatically. He was still playing the good guy leadership role so, he gave lip service to my directions. It took over one hour to get everyone ready; it usually takes 15-20 minutes. The staff was looking like a bad drunken comedy troop. A group of crew drivers and tour personnel had gathered and were watching and laughing at the girls as they tried to make the uniform more revealing by rolling sleeves up and waistlines down. My transport driver attempted to help me out by laying into one of the guys that was loafing around, nearly setting off the first fist fight of the night. I asked if anyone in the group had ever worked a promotion before and, big surprise, no one ever had. Assessing the situation, I decided to get the tents up, the event going, and make the appropriate phone calls before I started sending the staff home. I had asked in training about firing staff members and, they had directed me not to do this unless I had cleared it with an account member first. I was figuring on having to let 3-4 of them go, at this point. I took the miniskirt girl and the drunken man with a fake leg to their tent. I told the two to only sample 1 per person, no matter how badly fans wanted more. The girl proceeded to walk right over to groups of people and started doling out handfuls to each person. When I returned with a table for the tent, she came over behind the table, threw her empty bag on the ground, and sprawled out on the nearest bench. Handling these two would have been bad enough but, I had to go set up the other event site before I lost track of the other group of staff. I left the first tent and headed off to set up the other two girls at the second tent (which I did in record time). Coming back to the first tent with more boxes of samples, I watched the man with the fake leg struggling to climb up on top of the sampling table. Once on top, he tried to jump up and down on the table, but hit his head on the top of the tent and fell down on the table. I was about 25 yards away but, in a large crowd of people so they couldn’t see me watching them. They both did a quick scan of the area looking for me then bolted off, leaving the tent and elements alone. I decided I had found the first two people to fire and began breaking down the tent and tables; when they finally returned, I told them they would no longer be needed. Now, I just had to get their uniforms and passes off of them and kick them out of the concert (not just because I wanted to but, also because they were obviously going to pop up again with the others if they stayed in the concert). When it finally sunk in that they were getting kicked-out, the drunken man with one leg tells the girl, in that drunken whisper that every sober person can hear, that he’s going to “F~ me up” and they can make a run for it. I never turned my back to give him the chance and had them both on the other side of the fence cursing at me in about 15 minutes (it was actually good fortune that he wasn’t wearing the shorts). I released those two at about 6:45pm and, made my way to the first tent (there’s even more to this but, I’m trying to keep it short). Along the way, I came up behind the male sampler that had lost his pass, talking to venue staff. I overheard him asking where the Beer Hospitality tent was. I continued on to the second sampling tent where I found the other guy with the two remaining staff girls. This guy had changed completely out of his uniform shorts, and was now wearing ankle length Dickies. He said he had gone out to the car and changed out of his shorts because he just couldn’t wear the shorts. He also left his sampling bag in the car for some reason. It was approximately 7pm. I told one the two girls to call Ross and get him to the tent. I was several feet away from her with my back turned when she made the call, but I could hear her on the phone telling him what was happening. I walked up to her and she suddenly started saying, “Hello, Hello?” as if he was not on the phone. I tried him on my phone but, of course, he did not answer. At this point, I figured I would find at least one sampler in the Beer (FREE beer, no less) Hospitality tent. I made my way backstage to the tent. Inside, I found this large guy I’d never seen before wearing one of our staff shirts with the sleeves freshly ripped-off. I asked him where he found it, and he said a guy inside the tent gave it to him. I was asking him where the guy was exactly when he saw my branded shirt. He said he didn’t want to get the guy in trouble and took off with his group of friends. The Beer tent was packed. I made my way inside and headed towards the back of the crowd. There, in the back corner of the tent, were Ross and the other sampler guy. Ross, the “team leader,” had completely changed back into his street clothes and was drinking a beer. The other guy had changed back into his street shirt and, was drinking a beer, also. We walked outside and Ross told me he, “just couldn’t do it.” I told him he and his team had blown the entire event and that not only were they not going to be paid, the agency they came from might lose the contract and have to reimburse all the losses they had caused. I almost laughed for the first time all evening when he asked me not to tell anyone what had happened. At 7:15pm, I had two girls in uniform sampling and the one guy who had lost his bag and shorts trying to sample the crowd by walking back and forth from an open sample box to the crowd with a few condoms in his hand. The drunken man with the fake leg and the miniskirt girl had snuck back in somehow and were at the tent running their mouths incessantly in my direction. In fact, all four staff I had released were standing at the tent looking drunk and upset. One of the girls actually working pulled me aside and told me she didn’t know any of the group, having been referred by a friend who knew Russ. I told her I was going to have all of them removed by security and, she got very concerned she was going to lose her ride home if they were kicked-out (they lived about 2 hours away). She wanted to leave, too, if I was going to have them kicked-out. I decided that the safest thing to do for the program would be to scrap the night ( 7:30pm). The night was a disaster. We lost more clothing and sampling bags that night than the entire tour! A casual observer would easily conclude that at least five of the staff never had any real intentions to work as samplers (or, if they even knew what sampling was). It was the most frustrating event I had ever managed before or since. For all these reasons, this crew takes the prize for “Worst Samplers Ever” in my seven years of managing events. TOP THAT!!!
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