After three nights of absolutely no sleep and some bizarre,
stress-induced dreams, I woke up yesterday and the thought went through my
head: Oh my God, it’s TODAY.
After months of planning – well, not so much planning as
just waiting for it to arrive – the Taco John’s fund-raiser finally got here.
At the same time, we had yet another “prepare the campus” day
that was successful but we weren’t able to do the one big thing we needed to do
because we had a weather forecast for 10-16 inches of snow this weekend. You
cannot put up a 50-foot circus tent and expect it to stay up with that much
snow on it, so we delayed that another week.
But I had little to do with that; I had to get going on
setting up the Taco John’s stuff at all three stores. Got started at 8 a.m. in
the office, loading stuff up and trying to make sure all the Is were dotted and
the Ts were crossed.
Not to mention the vacuuming the floor because I spent two
hours on Friday (the equivalent of “Fruitcakes” and “License to Chill”) slicing
paper for thank-yous to be handed out with orders. That left little paper
slices and lots of dust and I really didn’t want to walk into a mess on Monday
morning.
So after loading my car with buttons, T-shirts, flyers and
everything else, I set out to meet Megan at 9 a.m. at one store. Honest to God,
I was so wired I don’t even remember the time in the car. I had “Big Dog Daddy”
on and was just blasting. My brain was totally elsewhere and going about 800
miles a minute. I kept coming back to the road in front of me, thinking, “Wow,
I don’t remember making that turn.” Not the safest of driving conditions.
But fortunately I didn’t get nailed for speeding or anything
else and got all three stores plastered with information about Hope Village,
T-shirts delivered and thank-yous distributed, etc. Then I hustled to pick up
our newest employee, who was covering the first shift at one of the stores
before heading back to the store at which I was starting.
The fund-raiser was from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and I’m telling
you, everyone and their brother came in at least once that day. People started
coming in at 10:50 or so and said, “If I buy it now, will it count?”
It was absolutely nuts. And so much fun.
It is very weird to me, because I am a total introvert, but
I love doing that stuff. I was handing out pins in the drive-thru, just walking
by and motioning for people to roll down the windows so I could hand them out.
Part of that is these pins are “Summer of Hope” pins and
T-shirts that the Long-Term Recovery committee did last year. They got in a
bind and wound up with too many and an unpaid bill. I championed the idea of paying
off the tab (something like $1500), taking custody of the shirts and
essentially just bailing out the committee. I took a chance on making enough in
the fund-raiser to cover it, and fortunately, we did.
So now, I never wanted to see those pins again. I handed out
probably at least a hundred at my location and I thought they were doing so at
the South and I thought we ran out by lunch, but today when I went to church I
plopped some stuff on my desk and behold, there was a bag of about 15 pins. Grr.
Anyway, I was out in the parking lot, the drive thru, the
street (some of my sign-holders didn’t show and I spent an hour and a half in
31-degree weather waving a sign – no gloves; I'm getting sick now) and elsewhere, talking with flood
survivors, members of the community, friends and neighbors. It was totally
cool.
At one point during lunch, the drive-thru line weaved
through the parking lot, back down the road and to the main street. Taco John’s
updated the total amount raised on the marquee every hour. I had forgotten
about that and when I checked on the kids waving signs on the first shift (it
was the second, third and fourth shifts that had the no-shows), they excitedly
said, “Is that us?!” I looked up and saw that after one hour, it was $3,600.
It was so amazing to see the total grow. I went down to the
South location – which is the biggest one – and it was truly packed. There, I
had to hold the sign so I didn’t get in on the radio remote, which was OK
because it was done in the office and not in the crowd. But I got to pop in and
see Megan and her father, who is the owner of the stores. I had been working
with her but hadn’t met him yet, so that was cool.
From there, I visited the mall and by that time – after
three or four hours – the total was $14,000. The employees were just so psyched
to be a part of it, too. The guys at the mall were just pumped, and even
earlier in the week, Steve had bought lunch at the South store and, while in
the drive thru, the employees saw his car signs and were all excited and made a
point to meet him and tell him they were stoked.
Everyone was. Rick, one of the marketing guys, told me when
it was over that he’d seen me handing out pins at North, so he did that at
South a little later. He went to hand out some and people would hold theirs up,
saying, “We were at the other store for lunch and we’re eating dinner here
now!”
With one hour remaining, we were at $23,130. That right
there was more than I’d expected. Honestly, I thought $15k was a safe bet and
$20k would have covered the two salaries we were hoping to cover with the
event. In my wildest dreams, I thought maybe $25k. So the total -- $27,041.71 –
just blew me away. (And we’ve yet to count the tip jars, so it really will be
around $30k.)
Around 6:30, I think it suddenly occurred to about half the
people in Minot
they had planned on hitting Taco John’s, because that was just a mad, mad rush.
Out of pins, I decided to go ahead and hand out a box of T-shirts and started
going up and down the drive-thru again. I wish I’d brought the other three boxes!
There were still people in line at 7 p.m. so they extended
the event for 15 minutes, which was amazing. I was camped out at North, and I
kept watching the board and waiting for the total. I finally logged on and
realized they were still counting, so I headed down to South to meet Megan.
She made the call to add the tip jars in later and change
the marquee to the sales amount only – I didn’t want to leave without taking
that final photo.
And man, it was such a cool photo. I didn’t get to update
the Facebook page until after 4:30 p.m. or so, but once I did it totally took
off. Megan had been updating the TJ’s site constantly, but she had an office to
work in – I was walking up and down the drive-thru lane!
Once I got on, though, it really took off. I had noticed the
“likes” increase again during the middle of the week, and on Saturday they went
from about 490 to 510 or so. I made a point to recognize the 500th
person. This morning, I’m over 530, and the final total photo had been viewed
by over 10,500 people.
So this has just been amazing and beyond anything I’d
imagined. I am so thankful for Taco John’s!
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