What an Okay Size Failure Tastes Like

In U.S. universities many international students will be part of a student organization/club at their institution so that they can hang out and do things with the friends of the same country or region. Mine is weird, we are just random students that get together to put at least one event a semester. I am the “President” of the club, and alas I carry most of the responsibility of the event.

Yesterday was the University’s International Etiquette Dinner, our biggest event. My team of 5 and I, and another half team of ~4, who wanted in for some reason, were to put this together. Sequentially, the event was - a set of guest speakers, dinner for 300, intercultural entertainment shows, a trivia, and an after party with a dj. This was months of planning.

Anyways, the day came, and although preparations were a mess (like it always is for these events run by students), it all looked like coming together okay. The speakers talked, and then it was dinner time. We called table numbers instructing them to go to the next room to get food. The plan was simple - to only serve one portion of meat per person, and then after everyone had had a whole plate of food, allow guests for a second round.

Let’s go back a couple hours. Around 4pm (the event was to start at 6). We were coordinating everything when we noticed we were quite short staffed. My team, hence, called all our close friends to see if they could volunteer and help us with the food serving, which was were we needed people. Around 8 persons miraculously said they could help us. The three members in charge of the dinner reviewed the game plan, including the one-meat-portion policy, and it all looked okay.

Let’s go back to minutes before the dinner. The last speakers is almost done. I check, and there is no one at the food room, I then rush to one of the designated members, and tell him - “Dude, dinner is in less than five minutes”. He then runs, and tell the other members, and the other members then tell the other friends, and just on time they are all set up to serve food, and it all looks okay.

It’s officially dinner time. I roam around between rooms monitoring. I see people waiting on line, mingling, laughing while waiting to get into the food room. I go inside, and people are being served, it all looks okay (event though it isn’t). I see the drinks are a mess, and another member and I sort them out. Then I go back to the ballroom, I check in to the photo boot, apparently some kids have taken/stolen the props, and that’s my current concern. While I am looking for the kids and their parents, I see guests going back to their table with plates loaded with meat, but that looks normal, there is so much going on, and my mind is in another task. I find one of the parents, ask him to take care of his kids, and then I find another set parents and tell them the same. About 20 minutes has passed since food started being served. On one of my monitoring loops, I encounters one of my team members, he says - I think we are giving too much meat out, and it all clicks. I had been glancing so many plates with the incorrect portion of food and I was unaware of it! I run to the family room and see effectively that we all forgot the one-meat-portion plan! HOLY SHIT. I tell the food servers “Only one piece of meat! Only one piece of meat!” I go check in with the crew leader - “Hey dude, what the hell? It is only one piece” He replies “Oh, _____ said out to give out two” WTF, I go and talk to ______, “Hey did you tell them to give out two?” - “Yes, two is okay” or something like that he says, “????? NO! Only one!”. I immediately run to the food warmers to see how many trays of meat we have left… Zero… and my heart pulse rate drops. I go back to the food room, and I see we have about one and a half trays of meat. While I remember the line for food was long less than a minute ago, I walk out of the room very slowly hopping it has shrinked. It hasn’t. I had not had lunch, and was not going to have dinner, but I just went to the bathroom, and puked water.

While, and after my anxiety tries to get whatever is in my stomach out of me, I think, what if I grab my bike and leave? We’ve officially screwed up. That’s just a thought. I clean myself up, and tell myself, put your big boy pants up. I have no idea where I got strength back, but my morale was entirely gone. I head anyways back to the room and try to find for a solution. We only have rice, hummus, and salad left… Oh yeah, this whole event was middle-eastern themed (this will be important later). I go back to the kitchen and…

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