The eventful adventures of Mary Croquette: mission roll up, banner, display stand and whatnot

Hi there, I’m Mary Croquette

Let me tell you about…

MISSION ROLL-UP BANNER, DISPLAY STAND AND WHATNOT

I’m guessing by simply reading the title a few of these missions spring to mind. I’m going to talk about one in particular that happened to me today as it happens.

That moment at the end of the day when you are finishing up and jotting down everything that you have to do the next day, rather pleased that you have done your job well and completed all your targets for that day (this happens once in a blue moon) and all of a sudden, a hunch that something could be tweaked and improved, or that feeling, when you’re going on a trip and you think that you left something at home overwhelms you and BOOM…a sudden mini heart attack. What’s a mini heart attack, you ask? Well I get them quite often, when you glance at the time, you see 5 o’clock and think “School! Kids! No time!” and then look at the time again and see that it’s only 4. You breathe and keep going…well it’s one of those moments. That said, this case warrants one: you realise it’s 7 o’clock, the delivery guys have already left but a roll up banner needs to be at an event tomorrow by 9 am but because you’ve been that swamped you’ve forgotten all about it.

You go to the store room and look for one in particular and… that forest, that jungle smothered in dust with unnecessary boxes and equipment that everyone at fairs asks for with the well-known phrase “What do you have?” swallows you up and you hurry to find the only one you need to send. You can think about how you will send it afterwards, but first you need to find it, because if there’s anything we can do in marketing, it’s performing miracles. I don’t know how, but in the end, it does its job in the wonderful event.

It’s now time for mission roll-up – you have 20 banners in this delightful cover with zipper and lining. You open one praying that it doesn’t get caught on the felt protecting it… phew, you got it out. Now unroll it to see what it’s hiding. It’s heavy, the ring catches, it’s covered in dust and you with your fabulous white ensemble, because… is it not always the way when you have to go to the warehouse you’re wearing white? And when you leave, your colleagues look at you as if you’ve just got back from war?

So, it’s not the one you need and you keep opening more and more. Then, when coming out, that despised moment when it gets caught and you’re juggling to remove it. In my store room there are security cameras and I imagine the London guards watching the footage with popcorn, Coca-Cola and roaring with laughter, Bridget Jones style. You struggle endlessly to get it out thinking that it’s the one you’ve been searching for… But no, in the end you unroll it and you discover it’s more out of date than the apple lying at the bottom of your daughter’s school bag, which you haven’t emptied in 7 days with the workload you’ve had.

After opening 19, you’re on to the last. At this point you wonder why you don’t label them on the outside, and then you come right back to reality and realise that you can’t for a second believe what it says on the outside because they’re all jumbled up when they’re given back to you.

The twentieth! There it is, shiny and untouched. “It’s this one, it’s this one!”, you open it with your very own hands and their permanent manicure destroyed and there it is, you are overcome with happiness, you forget the whole affair and go back to being passionate about your job. All that’s left to do is send it on time, but that’s another story.

I gotta shoot – I have to come up with a classification system for the roll-up banners so that I never have to face this situation ever again.

Best wishes

Mary Croquette