The next order of business was to check out the hospitality room. We have done several reunions at this hotel and I already knew what the room looked like, we just needed to make certain the hotel had it set up the way I wanted.

After returning from the tour, Mork asked to talk to me about his room. Keep in mind that Mork and Mindy got their room free, and that the hotel moved them to an upgraded room. For this particular hotel, that meant a standard King room with access to the club level. Since there were no rooms available on the club level, Mork and Mindy were placed on the 5th floor and their key was coded to give them access to the 6th floor, the club floor. The advantage was that on the 6th floor there are evening snacks and drinks provided compliments of the hotel. Apparently when Mork and Mindy went to their room on the 5th floor, they passed by room 505. Room 505 at this particular hotel is the Presidential Suite. When Mork saw those two double oak doors and the brass plaque on the door saying it was the Presidential Suite, he went immediately to the main lobby and demanded to see the General Manager. The resulting scene in the lobby of the hotel included him demanding to know why he was not assigned the Presidential Suite. He felt that he should have gotten that room since he was the Chairman of the Bad Call Association and he had brought so many people to the hotel. When things finally calmed down, the General Manager told Mork that he would arrange a meeting later that evening.

Around 7:00 PM we held a meeting in my room. Remember, I said that I always requested a double double, but considering the number of groups that I had brought to the hotel, they provided me a suite, room 522, or the Directors Suite. That is where we met. The meeting included the General Manager, the event services manager, the hotel's sales manager, reservations manager and myself. The meeting was quick, and it was brutal. The General manager asked the sales manager what our guarantee was in the contract. He then asked the reservations manager what our actual pick up was. He then informed Mork that he would gladly move him and Mindy into the Presidential Suite as soon as we paid a little more than $6,000.00 in attrition penalties. Since I was the one who signed the contracts, he asked me if that would be satisfactory. Obviously I declined that offer and said that Mork could live without the Presidential Suite. I did offer to move from the Directors Suite however and let Mork and Mindy have that room. The General Manager said that if I wanted to move, he would take care of it. He also stated that if I did, he still would not move Mork into a suite. That ended the meeting. Here is when I really screwed things up. As a way to try to smooth things out with Mork, I told a lie. I shouldn't have, but I did. I told him that I got the suite however I paid the additional charges. I messed that up, but I figured that letting him know that I received a two room parlor suite with the conference table, couches, large screen TV, and all the other bells and whistles for free would only add fuel to the fire. Eventually he found out that I did get it for free and that just made him more angry.

Friday evening following the buffet dinner I started to review the events of the preceding several days and decided that there was no way to make up for the problems. While the Bad Call was a wonderful group, I simply could not see anyway we could represent them at their next reunion. Later that evening I met with Mork and advised him that MRTR would not act as agent at the next reunion. I explained that we would assist them as much as possible and would recommend another planner, but the next year would be without our assistance. I also said that the best way to handle this was to attend the business meeting the next morning and advise the group that Mork had decided not to use our services in the future. This would avoid any problems arising from us refusing to represent the group at their next reunion.

While this would be another lie, it was a good decision and the right thing to do. It is kind of like looking at someones new born baby. Even if it looks like Winston Churchill, you still say it is a cute baby. It simply would have been a bad idea to tell the group that we would refuse to represent the group in the future. Those who attended the Bad Call reunion were great people, it was a wonderful group. Reunions like this are about those people, not about the chairman and not about MRTR. Bringing to light the problems and friction between the chairman and the MRTR staff would not have been productive and would likely have caused problems for the group in the future.

The final event would be the banquet dinner that night. For the preceding three days we had tried to get Mork to give us the names of who would act as chaplain, who he wanted to sit at the head table, what he wanted us to do as far as the banquet was concerned. We were prepared to produce a banquet program, head table tent cards and if he wanted, to emcee the dinner. For three days, Mork made no decision. At 6:00 the hotel opened the cash bar. At 6:45 the doors opened and as people filed into the room Mork came over and said he wanted us to make tent cards for the people who were to sit at the head table. He also asked us to emcee the banquet dinner. I explained that I simply will not do something like that unless I am prepared, and that 15 minutes advance notice is simply not enough time. I did make certain that everything was in order and then excused myself and left once the dinner started.

After dinner was over I returned and introduced Mork to the DJ. I explained that as a favor, the DJ would provide music to the group for $450.00, payable by check. However, if we paid him with cash, he would do it for $200.00. Mork said that he would not reimburse us for any cash distributions. I ignored Mork and paid the DJ in cash.

Poor Mindy, nothing to do while Mork was visiting and reminiscing with his buddies. So, she asked if she could handle selling the raffle tickets, $20.00 in raffle tickets and they get a free hat. She also wanted to sell the excess cups. Since Mork had not attended the APC meeting, he had never decided what he wanted us to do with the excess hats. So, we gave all the hats and cups to Mindy. After the banquet dinner, we met for one last time. Mindy told us that since we ordered too many hats and cups (hats and cups were ordered based on the expected attendance), we should have to pay for any remaining hats. Mindy expected us to pay $20.00 for each remaining ballcaps. I tried to explain that the hats only cost $7.00 each to begin with. Mindy simply could not understand why we wouldn't pay $13.00 more for the hats than they cost, keeping in mind that we paid for them to begin with and the fact that there were so many left over because Mork insisted that we would have so many more attendees based on his "Online Survey". Actually it really didn't matter anyway. In the morning Mork was gone, Mindy was gone, the excess hats were gone, the excess cups were gone. Oh yes, the money from the sale of hats and cups was gone too.

I did receive one final bit of information about this group, K&E Crafts, the company that did the cups for the group also did some "On-Site" sales. Mork's check bounced.