The nightmare continues...

     And so it did...between the client changing shifts and canceling shifts and employees not showing up and calling out late, my job was not only as a supervisor but a magician... but with the help of a few employees who did show up and were willing to the extra things we needed (besides myself) we made it work.  The client got a little frustrated with some miscommunication...(typical in an event this size) and I was a little frustrated with the quality of the employees I was left with...(the branch manager took his best employees with him to Las Vegas to run an event), but all in all we made it work.  The scheduling woman (Emily) was a fantastic help and I survived through Wednesday night when my boss arrived and provided some very needed help.  He secured an RV (courtesy of the San Diego branch) to be parked on site to serve as a sign-in trailer and uniform depot...(before this everything was in the rental car and parked off site).  Then he got us an admin person to help with sign-ins so that we could post our guards quicker and relieve the guards already on post.  And he was there to help with the myriad of questions coming at us from all sides.  So although it was still a nightmare, I thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

     It wasn't a light, it was an oncoming train... after finally getting back to the hotel around 9:30pm and eating my dinner with eyes closed...(it wasn't very good, either), I passed out around 10 only to be awakened at 11 by my boss telling me the client was breathing fire about the night supervisor and I had to call on-call scheduling to get his phone number to handle the problem.  Of course they didn't answer but I left a message and fell back asleep...phone goes off again at midnight and another message with if they don't call by 1am, I need to go to the site and handle it personally... no call and so at 3:50am (I fell asleep again, oops) I drove to the site and relieved the supervisor with another guy there and checked on all staff to make sure they were where the client needed them.  Got back to the hotel at 4:30am and slept til 6am and got up to start the next day (it hurts just writing about it again...).  But again we managed to see it through that day and the next night I went to sleep at 8:30pm.

     The actual auction started on Friday and ran through the weekend.  I was in charge of the auction tent and the guards posted to monitor the sky-boxes and bidder seating area (where the people buying the cars are allowed to sit). Because it's smaller than the auction I worked in Scottsdale, the general public was allowed to sit in the rear of the section to fill the seats so it looked full for the live TV coverage...and that made life a little easier.  But through the entire event there were no major problems to deal with besides crowd control on Saturday and even the minor incidents were minimal... I also met some of my vendor friends from Scottsdale and met the sponsor reps for all the sky-boxes...(a friend with cold, free water is always welcome).  The auction ran way over on Saturday night and I didn't get to sleep until almost midnight, but Sunday ran so smoothly that Eric (my boss) and I were able to enjoy the "victory" cigars I brought along... (henceforth they will be renamed the survival cigars) around 6pm Sunday night and were able to run the show from the sign-in trailer...my deployment was cut around 5:30pm and so I was there as a fireman to put out personnel fires until the night shift showed up.  Sunday night was sleep in night and Monday morning Eric and I stopped for breakfast...(the only meal using utensils I had the entire week I was there).  Then we embarked on the journey back to blessed Phoenix...

     Blessed...and blistering.  The weather was gorgeous in SoCal after the "marine layer" burned off.  It was in the 60's overnight and was hovering in the high 70's-low 80's range during the day with bright sunshine... when we left California it was 67 degrees on the car external temp gauge around 8:30am.  We arrived in Phoenix around 3pm and it was warmer...116 degrees!!! It was blistering hot and I couldn't be happier...it was so good to be home it didn't matter.  Learned a valuable Arizona lesson however.  Never, EVER, turn the AC completely off...it took most of a day and a half to cool the apartment to livable comfort...but again it didn't matter.  It's summer in Arizona. If you can't stand the heat...