Crowd control, or rather the lack of it. Not to be disrespectful or what, it's just something I noticed, or at least with the group I currently have on hand (yes, the I****n group)I realise that computer people have no skills in organising people. I'm sure their outlook express is fantastically neat with logical folders and subfolders, I'm sure their blackberry keeps them updated right to the seconds, I'm sure they can use their excel to tabulate how many stars there are in the sky at a random time, but they sure suck with handling people.

Upon the group's arrival, I found out that in actual fact there are like 10 people in the working committee, all of whom except one (the idiot) i have never met and suddenly I have to re-tell my story and plan all the activities with these people. Great....but luckily I'm good with people (chey-ba) and I tried my very very very best to accommodate them...but really...first of all, they can't even confirm who is coming and who isn't. Secondly, they have no idea what time flight they are coming until the morning itself and then it becomes a game of catch who you can at the airport and send them here...then see if you sent them to the right hotel. Great....so I had my arms and legs full trying to accommodate their guest. They suck at getting information from their pple and getting datelines met in submitting namelist and flight details.

Fine. Now it's been 2 days so now everyone is settling in fine.

NOT.

First night they checked in, their organiser actually planned dinner for them. BUt guess what, they didn't put it in their agenda so pple started going out and having dinner everywhere except where it's paid for already. I was shocked to find an empty restaurant waiting for guests. Thank goodness they are paying anyway. If not I'll have hell from my FB.

Second night, they had a dinner party at another hotel, all paid for and all arranged for. We spent years on the menu (if you remembered my whinings) and guess what, his guests actually booked tickets to go see a show in town, skipping the dinner entirely. Talk about crowd control! You can't even get your participants to go for dinner.

Then tonight they have a party with us at the hotel. We changed meeting time from 6.30 p.m to 7 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. to 8 p.m. to whoever comes, come. At 8 p.m. they were still hanging around the lobby talking and checking their computer.What is it abt their laptops that they cannot leave for a few minutes?? So there goes our plans, our welcome dance, our big surprise and our programme. And they have no emcee among their pple so the whole program is like...er...ok...what now? And they don't listen. They have people making announcement up on stage and they are pleading their hearts out to be heard but no one is bothering. THe poor girl is up on the stage going 'excuse me, excuse me' and then one table is loudly cheering away (you know our chinese dinner "yam seng!!!") and then another table starts and the poor girl was like blabbering what her announcement was. (It was abt white-water rafting and I think I can forget abt pple turning up on time tomorrow since no one could hear the time)

I have been in several group committee and I know how important it is to get your pple to move to your agenda. I'll flip if I found out my participants are booking taxis on their own to go out to town when I planned everything for them at the hotel. I can't believe they bought their own package tours to go to the islands when white-water rafting is provided for tomorrow. Don't these pple know?? Don't they inform their participants what activities they are organising??

And don't mention teambuilding yesterday. My poor guest activities manager almost screamed her guts out giving instructions to the pple abt the games(like telematch with beach volleyball and kayaking), only to have them ask if they can play tennis and jet-skiing. THanks. For all that crap when we took so long to plan for you. And then....the silly organisers did not tell us they have senior citizens mostly....why in the first place did they agree to kayaking as part of teambuilding????!! WHY???? All the wheezing and panting at the end. Thank God we didn't have to make reservation for the Bangkok Phuket Hospital.

Sigh...it's an eye-opener. I think i've stopped complaining once I've accepted the fact that these organisers suck. It's not me. It's them. Please...take my advice. Please hire an event organiser if you are a computer company planning a meeting. They are paid to take headaches like you. THere's really nothing I can do. I think they are made that way.

Now I know why they sway their heads the way they do. WHen you meet one, you take a look at them, heave a deep sigh and swaaaayyyy.