This story is a disaster of my own making, unfortunately.
I had been an Event Producer at GP for about seven months and was working on my biggest event to date: a 500+-guest seated dinner for a nonprofit client at the venue that is now my home base, the Brooklyn Museum.
Everything being brought into the museum for an event needs to be delivered between 8am and 11am before the museum opens to the public. So when I got a call from our Sanitation Captain at 8:10am, I knew something was amiss.
“Hey Morgan,” he said. “Did you mean to order linens that are 6 inches short all the way around?”
My heart dropped.
No, there was no method to my madness. I had just entered the wrong size.
The good news was that we had several hours to right the wrong. The bad news was that it was a very specific linen, and therefore an expensive fix that we would have to absorb.
Despite the morning scramble, the client was none the wiser and enjoyed an incredible event.
That evening, everything looked as it was supposed to.
When I told Linda Abbey, our Executive VP (and my longtime mentor and former manager), in the days that followed, she was almost eerily calm.
My gratitude—then and to this day—for her composed acceptance and guidance in that moment is immeasurable.
In all things, it is best to measure twice and cut once.