Shanghaied Again!

You know how someone comes up on you asking for a favor and before you can say NO, you've been shanghaied into working yet another function at the Elks Lodge?  This should be easy, it's just selling $20 tickets for the Cattlemen's Dinner.  How hard can that be?

It's just like Bingo, but without the infernal machine.  Instead I have a mini hand-held machine that's the devil himself!  I quickly regretted my decision.

That old saying ... if it can go wrong, it WILL?  Yeah .... that one.  I arrived early hoping to get a quick session on how to use the little machine.  Previously, I had all of one minutes direction.  I headed upstairs to get the tickets, which had been shown to me previously.  They were GONE.  

Big sigh ... it starts!!  I went to the bar to get the cash bag, and thankfully found it, but still ... no tickets.  Wouldn't you know, since I was actually a little late leaving home, I forgot my phone.  I borrowed one and called the Club Manager.  He was none too happy.  He had taken the tickets and put them behind locked doors, not knowing I would be selling them.  

When he finally retrieved them, he gave me a date stamp to use ... but no ink pad.  Another trip back upstairs.

As people arrived, I sold a few tickets here and there, twiddling my thumbs in between.  When is the last time you just sat at a table for 90 minutes doing practically nothing?  I do like to people watch, and I did a lot of that.  It's interesting to note it's the same as high school ... little group here, little group there.

Suddenly a gentleman slid in the door with a wheelchair.  On the back was the biggest brightest flashing RED light you've ever seen.  Instant headache.  It killed my eyes ... I had thoughts of my brain getting scrambled by the strobe effect ... but eventually the battery ran down.  Thank goodness!!

Then I realized it was 6:15.  If you've never been to an Elks Lodge dinner, let me just say that RAFFLES are the name of the game.  Every group that sponsors a dinner here, gets donations of cool stuff to raffle off.  Ummmm no one is selling raffle tickets.  

I found the head Cattlemen's dinner guy and gave him a heads up.  He finally located two lovely ladies who had never done that before and didn't have a clue.  In less than 30 minutes they turned in their money.  Wait ... you have to keep selling!!!  Nope .. off they went.  So now I'm not only selling dinner tickets, I'm selling raffle tickets and mixing up the money quite nicely!!!  

Once the line was down, I wandered back to get my steak.  Good grief!  Never EVER have they had a steak this big.  I'm guessing it's about 22 ounces.  That's a picture of my plate above.  I had a friend take it for me.  THIS is what I brought home that I couldn't eat.  There's another three meals in this big container.  This steak was SO tender and SO good ... it would have been $70 anywhere else.

At long last it was time to close up shop.  Too bad the raffle was going great guns (SO LOUD) and I couldn't concentrate on ANYTHING.  I probably counted that money four times before I was done.  It took no time at all to figure out there was NO total for the night from the devil machine.  All those dinner tickets ran right into the days lunch totals.  

Thankfully it did print out a receipt for every credit card I ran, which meant I had to add up all those receipts.  Remember no phone so no calculator?  Oh yeah ... I had to do it all by hand.  Thirty minutes later and I had it all wrapped up, balanced and accounted for.

That's when the head dinner guy came over with a check and wanted cash.  NOOOOO ... I just did the bill count and filled out the paperwork!!  Apparently he paid for the steaks, then got someone to pay him back, but they wrote the check to the Elks, and he wanted the cash reimbursement.  

I paid him and just stuffed the check in the bag.  The total is right, but none of the paperwork is.  I dumped it in the safe.  Someone will be none too happy with me, so MAYBE I won't get asked to do it again!!

I was almost out the door when ... wait ... I spotted a phone left on my table.  Obviously it wasn't mine, so I picked it up.  I spent the next 30 minutes looking for it's owner.  Turns out it was the dinner chairman who had already left.  Seriously, someone CALLED him to say he left his phone.  Too funny, so I left it in the kitchen drawer.  Someone will give it to him when he tries to call someone and figures out he doesn't have it!!!

Coming up ... steak and eggs for breakfast!!!