I was in charge of the annual awards banquet at my place of employment.
For years I had been involved in its planning, and when the director stepped down last year, I was appointed to take her place.
Since hundreds of people attend each year, I rented a venue with space enough to seat everyone. I ran down my checklist of everything that had to be done in the days and weeks leading up to the event. On the morning of the banquet, everything seemed to be falling into place, with the gorgeous flowers that were delivered adding a special touch. But by mid-afternoon, I got a call from the venue that their air conditioner had stopped working. He assured me that a certified technician was on his way to fix the problem, but I rushed back to the location to check on the flowers. Once I arrived, the temperature in the room had gotten incredibly warm and stuffy, and I rushed to find the HVAC contractor. I found him outside of the building working on the air conditioning unit. I quickly asked him if he thought that he could fix the problem quickly because my event started in a few hours…and the flowers were wilting! He told me that he thought that there was a bad fan motor that needed to be replaced and that he was checking for any other problems. But he was confident that he would soon have the air conditioning working again. Thankfully he did, and the manager cranked up the air conditioning to as cold as he possibly could. The temperature in the room slowly started to cool down…thankfully before the flowers wilted!
