It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

HERE WE GOOOOOOOO.

The day of the ball is finally upon us!!! All the hard work has finally come together and I am so excited to tell you that everything has come together smoothly and everybody is running on time. What more could you ask for. The girls at Lifeline started setting up at 10am, I unfortunately couldn’t make it because work wouldn’t allow me the time off, I felt so guilty and I felt like I was letting the team down, but I was determined to work as hard as I could on the night to make up for it.

The first thing the girls and I were doing was greeting the guests and giving them table numbers. The VIP guests arrived first and it was a good opportunity to meet people and have a chat.
Being a girl….I watch AFL but I have NOOOOO idea who the players are or what they look like, so when a gentleman approach me with his girlfriend, I politely greeted them and asked what company they were with (all 50 tables except 3 or 4 were all from companies) I was then told they were with the ‘Paul Haselby Company’ so I politely thanked them for attending and wished them a wonderful evening. One of the girls then rushed over and said that’s Paul Haselby the AFL player and you just asked him what company he was from! I felt a bit embarrassed I didn’t recognise him, but then found it extremely funning that he took offence to my question, clearly not liking the fact I didn’t know who he was. Oh well you win some you lose some.

So back to the ball, I was showing the guests to their seats and was table hostess to 3 tables who I had sure had the best night, I made sure they knew what was happening during the night, I showed them where the silent auction was and made sure that almost everyone bought a raffle ticket. I must say it was a lot of fun. (I did notice that the table next to me was the table of Paul Haselby and even though they were all staring at me, I gracefully smiled and walked off…..still pretty embarrassing though)

One of the issues on the night (which nearly ruined the night for me) occurred when the staff weren’t being very organised. We had just invited the governor on stage to draw the raffle, when we realised the raffle bucket wasn’t on stage, 10 volunteers, including myself, ran out the back to grab the bucket to find that the raffle tickets hadn’t been ripped off and put in there. Long story short, as the main event coordinator tried to grab the bucket, the lady who was in charge of making sure that all rules and regulations were followed started yelling at everyone, calling one person an ‘up start’ saying she was ‘disgusted’ at another person and upsetting a lot of the volunteers calling someone an ‘idiot’ and being very demeaning and hurtful.

I was getting really upset and didn’t want my night to be ruined, so I politely said ‘we are really sorry that we have done the wrong thing, can we please help you put the raffle tickets in the bucket, let’s not get upset we’re all under pressure and we’ll get it done as fast as we can.’ I had the coordinator and the volunteers say well done Jess, well said, lets regroup, refocus and do the best we can. The lady then turned to me, told me to ‘shut up and get out.’ I couldn’t believe my hears and I said ‘excuse me’ and her husband then said ‘she told you to shut up now do as your told and get out.’ I then said to the couple, I don’t appreciate the way you’re talking to me, you don’t have a right to say those things and the lady turned around and said yes I did and then the coordinator and the fundraising manager of Lifeline stuck up for me and told the lady that what she was doing was wrong and that she had no right treating me or any of the other volunteers that way. (she then sat down) haha To this day, I am still furious at the way I was spoken to.

The way that situation was resolved was with the CEO having to be called into the room to talk to the lady about her behaviour and then the CEO came to me and apologised on behalf of Lifeline and that lady and thanked me for trying to resolve the situation, she said I handled it very well and with a lot of class.

After that incident, I completely immersed myself back into the event to take my mind off it, it was then my job to collect the bids for the mystery prize, find the person and tell them they had won. After a few wines, the individuals that won were ecstatic (even if it was a bottle of wine) so that definitely cheered me up seeing how happy they were to have won.
The event ran extremely smoothly (other than that previous issue) all the guest arrived on time and from the feedback had a wonderful time and asked to be put on the mailing list for next year. Even though we only sold 500 of 1000 tickets, we managed to raise more money than last year which was an amazing effort.

The pack up was very tedious having to dismantle the centre pieces and collect all the paper and pens and candles from the table and place them in boxes.

Walking out of the event I took time to reflect and couldn’t believe how quickly 10 hours had flown by and how much I enjoyed myself. I then bumped into a slightly intoxicated Paul Haselby who shook my hand and thanked me for a wonderful evening…I think he forgot all about our little incident and invited me to the after party at Malt Supper Club, I graciously declined and picked up my ball dress with my shoes in one hand and my tired bare feet barley moving and drove home at 1am for a well needed rest.

What an amazing way to finish my internship, I finished my final day gathering data from the ball including statistics, figures and calculating expenses and profits. I had to process countless pledge cards and raffle tickets and gather volunteer feedback.

I loved every second of my placement, the good and the bad, I have learnt so much and I am so glad that there were a few negative aspects in there because it really teaches you how to respond and behave. I have definitely made a connection for life with Lifeline and would go back and help out in a heartbeat.

I hope you have all enjoyed reading my posts.

Good luck with your report writing and all the best for the future.

Over and out,
Jessica Dreier
14270952
Bentley Campus