Get Motivated

On Wednesday, some of my co-workers and I got up bright and early in order to ride together to the Get Motivated seminar in Greenville at the Bilo Center. I left my house at 6:15 in order to catch a ride with 5 others since parking would be limited. We arrived downtown at 7am and parked at the Hyatt. We found great seats and settled in for a nice day. Anticipating long lines & slow service, 4 of us had packed our lunch. The other 4 planned on eating at the Bilo Center.

The seminar started out with some great speakers. We heard Dr. Robert Schuller, Rudy Giuliani, Lou Holtz, Steve Forbes and Laura Bush (live & in person!). All the speakers had some great talking points. I was smart enough to take bathroom breaks before an official break in order to not wait in line. Around 9:30am, I noticed the whole place was completely packed in and people were starting to stand up since no seats were left.

At 1pm, they finally let us break for lunch for one hour. The four of us that brought our lunch headed out to the car. The other four were saving seats since we already saw some being stolen when folks went on break. We ate our lunch and came back around 1:30pm. The doors were locked. The fire marshall closed the place down for over-crowding. There were probably a thousand of us locked out that had left the building for lunch. One lady said she came outside to take a phone call since cell phone reception was horrible inside the building. She left her purse inside & they wouldn't let her back in. I had left my jacket on the seat in order to save my seat.

It was about 95 degrees outside. We found a bit of shade to stand under while we waited until folks got seated at 2pm for the start of the second half. They still did not open the doors. By this time, ants were crawling around on my feet & I was tired of standing outside. The four of us walked back to the Hyatt to use the restroom & cool off. We sent one guy back over at 2:30pm and he said the doors were still locked. Finally, after 3pm, our co-workers emerged and we were finally able to leave. We missed seeing Bill Cosby, Colin Powell, and the CEO of Southwest Airlines.

What a de-motivating day. Several things were to blame:
1. Too many tickets sold
2. No one at Bilo was scanning or counting tickets, they just tore off your stub so they had no clue how many people were in the building.
3. When they release 18,000 people to go to 6 concession stands at the same time, someone will get mad about the crowd & call a fire marshall.

Our 4 co-workers that stayed inside never got to eat lunch. They saved our seats and the lunch lines were too long. We drove through Chick-Fil-A after 3pm for them to eat lunch. I, of course, got a milkshake - long deserved for standing in the hot sun for so long. Remind me not to wear white pants again if I am going to be locked out of a building for a long time.