Inter-Office Guitar Blog Contest: Entry # 5 (FINAL)
By April on May 23 Filed In Austin, Texas, Epiphone Guitar, Live Music, Sweet Consumers, Sweet Leaf Tea Company News 1 Comment
Entry # 5 Emily ($) Suttles
Emily’s Mis-Adventures: Lollapalooza 2006
Sweet Leaf Tea has never pretended to be one of the most organized & structured companies who conforms to traditional ways of doing things. I feel that it is important to preface this story with this information as some anomalous activities took place during Lollapalooza 2006. Well, maybe just anomalous for most companies…not so much ours.
I’ve been with Sweet Leaf Tea for 5 years, started as an intern making sample boxes and doing accounting work on the floor of a law firm that we were renting offices from, so I’ve had my share of ups and downs with this company. Lollapalooza 2006 was definitely a rollercoaster of emotions.
For those of you who don’t know, Sweet Leaf has a big, blue, eye sore of a school bus. I rode in this beast up with two other co-workers up to Chicago for the music festival. This school bus has no AC, no cruise control, and an unpleasant smell. Somehow, I got stuck driving from 1 am – 6 am and I made my own cruise control using a camera tripod which was probably not the safest thing to do. So, we arrive in Chicago, which for those of you who have ever been to Chicago, maneuvering a big school bus around is not an easy thing to accomplish. Once we finally parked, unloaded and unpacked the bus, we headed to Grant Park to help set up our booths at the festival. Aside from the two booths and VIP lounges that we sponsor, Sweet Leaf Tea is also sold at the bars. Upon my arrival, an intern and I were immediately commissioned to go get six large igloo coolers (a person could fit in these things) for the bars to keep our product cold. Our festival logistics manager had a Kia SUV rental car so we hopped in and set off to Costco. Upon purchasing these coolers, we realized that only 3 would actually fit in the car. Our intern suggested that we tie two to the roof with a couple bungie cords and call it a day. I was a little hesitant to do this, but being that he was so insistent that this would work just fine, I got in the driver’s seat and we started our drive back to Grant Park. We entered the exit ramp of a major freeway, and I’m really getting nervous about the coolers so I ask our intern to peak his head out the window to see if the coolers look like they are still safely secured to the roof. He assures me that they are. Not two minutes later, do I hear two loud thuds — yes, these massive coolers have just flown off the top of our Kia. I am panicked because someone could get seriously hurt if a cooler hit their windshield. Thank God the coolers bounced to the emergency lane out of traffic. After recovering from my small heart attack, we decided we should try to get these coolers back because these suckers were not cheap. I made the u-turn to come back up to get the coolers and it was not but a few minutes that a party rental van pulled over, six men jumped out and proceeded to try to steal our coolers!!! They made off with one. Our intern thought it would be a brilliant idea to go get more coolers and again strap these coolers to the roof. I didn’t exactly want blood on my hands when I was just trying to enjoy a music festival and sell some tea, so I completely ignored this absurd suggestion.
The festival began. I listened to some music, slung some tea and performed my duty of collecting money from our cash boxes and put them in my backpack each day. (At this time, I was SLT’s accountant and not yet living the luxurious life of as a SLT saleswoman). It was understood, or so I thought, that the money was going to go back with the SLT employees who were driving the bus back to Austin because I was flying home and no one was ever able to go deposit the money at the bank because we were all working the booths. The day comes where it is time to leave – I need to get to O’Hare and the bus is heading back to Austin. The guys who were taking the bus back decided to leave in the middle of the night. So, I take my luggage and backpack and head for O’Hare airport. I miss my flight and now have to go through security with a bunch of small bills and a sack of quarters. I am terrified that I will either be pegged as a drug dealer or stripper. I carefully placed the backpack on the conveyor belt and held my breath. I hear a “ma’am, do you have a bunch of change in your bag or somethin.” I reply,” yes, I have a lot of quarters.” “Oh, okay.” Whew! I made it. Clayton is also on my flight, and shockingly, he missed the flight as well. Because I checked in before him, I got priority for stand-by on the next flight. I get on the flight that is leaving an hour later. Clayton does not. He thinks that he can just pull rank and I will just step aside. Heck no. I had already been working in Chicago for 2 weeks and beyond ready to get home that I wouldn’t have cared if I got fired on the spot. So we started talking numbers in exchange for my seat. Let’s just say I worked out a pretty sweet deal with our CEO to remain at O’Hare so he could take the flight back to Austin. You would think I could get on a flight that day but O’Hare never ceases to amaze me. I can’t get a flight until the next morning and every hotel in town is booked. Guess who gets to sleep in the concourse with a money pillow. I tried to look inconspicuous but with the kung fu death grip I had on this bag, I might have failed at that task. Needless to say, I made it home finally. We counted the money at the office….thirty thousand dollars.
Moral of this story, never tie coolers to the roof of a car, avoid O’Hare airport at all costs, and if you get yourself in a bind, make sure you’re surrounded with good people, good music and even better…a little homemade goodness in a bottle.
EMILY $ SUTTLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
those are some funny stories….please tell us more