Everybody's Working for the weekend!

Except me. I am working this weekend. The whole weekend long. Its time for one of my big events that happens about once a quarter, which is normally a big pay off for me. But this event has been so much more work for what feels like less actual benefit. The hosting company keeps requesting more and more stuff from me and I'm not making any more money out of the deal.

Here is a short list:

1) They wanted me to prescan all product I am using and have it to them by today. We normally just scan all product we are using after the event, but now we have to do ALL of it before. And when did we find this out? Yesterday. I spent last night doing Phoenix, but had no way in hell to do San Diego. Maybe next time we should get an actual advance notice of this....

2) Web Stats. The hosting company suddenly decided they want to track the web hits to our site for traffic measurement. This week. Fortunately I have a great web master who already has some fantastic stuff set up, but another ton of work to heap on the week of the event.

3) Surveys. They want us to pass out surveys at this event. That's bad enough, but the kicker came when we got a spreadsheet asking us to compile all of the survey data for them and send that back. So now I am their marketing R&D department too?

4) Lifestyle DVD. This week we suddenly got a DVD in the mail They want us to play this DVD over and over again at the event to highlight the lifestyle of their game. Because you know, I want to spend an extra $200 on AV to advertise for them a dvd that is unlikely to actually be viewed by anyone but bored parents. Again, just got it this week.

5) Prereg. This is admittedly not from the hosting company. I noticed in the last marketing blitz responses a couple of comments about players desire for Preregistration, so I reimplemented preregistration. I gotta be honest, preregistration is a huge annoyance factor for me, and I only do it for customer satisfaction issues. It requires more staff, it has more logistical issues, and it means more work for me pre-event. I was surprised to learn that some organizer a) give discounts for prereg (so they're doing more work for less money) and b) charge the players in advance (thus having to pay transaction fees, and possible chargebacks for no shows). Whatever works for them I guess.

6) I am short staffed! Another issue that is not really the hosting companies fault, but I was short to begin with this time, and in the past week one guy has stated he is sick, and my wife, who is a huge help, won't be there for the first hour or two. Not so good for me..

So I'm stressed and bitching a bit, but that's the way it goes. I'm sure it will be fine when I get there. I always find a way to make it all work out.

Have a good weekend.