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Other Duties as Assigned Other Duties as
Other Duties as Assigned
Duly Noted Naz Sabripour Director of Convention Services, Pasadena Convention Center Back in December 2009,
we had a client in-house for a corporate regional meet- ing who forgot to bring notepads and pens for their attendees. Even though they were here the night before, they didn’t mention this to their assigned event man- ager until the morning of their event. Morning comes around, and they are frantically tell-
ing their event manager that they forgot the notepads and pens. I could tell the event manager was a little fraz- zled with the demands, of course, of the meeting planner. That’s when I offered, saying, “Look, I’d be more than happy to run — if it’s an easy fix of just going to the store and getting the notepads and pens, let’s do that.” When she brings it back to the client, they were wishy-washy — “Is it essential, do we really need them, not quite sure” — but finally it was determined that they did need them for their general session, which was scheduled to start roughly around 10 a.m. That’s when I decided to get into the car and go to the local Office
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Depot and get all the pads and pens that they had. The Office Depot employees definitely had that look
of, “Ma’am, it’s nine o’clock, we just opened up, why are you trying to wipe us out of our stock of notepads and pens?” I spent, on the client’s credit card, approxi- mately $700. It weighed down my trunk for sure — I do not have an SUV by any means. So I ran back to the convention center, and contacted
the event manager like five minutes before I was back at the property, saying, “Tell someone from the operations side to meet me close to the ballroom to start unload- ing the notepads and pens.” I went back to the conven- tion center, gave them the pads and pens — the client was thrilled, of course; everything was situated, and the meeting went on. Those pads and pens did get used. That would have been horrible if they didn’t. That same client is coming back in about a week. And the notepads and pens are taken care of. — As told to Hunter R. Slaton
ILLUSTRATION BY JACK UNRUH