Back in the 90’s we used to do exhibitions for the company I worked for. This time we were at the NEC in Birmingham.
We had built our own stand in black as money was tight so thought it would save us a few quid. When we built the stand ready for the exhibition we realised that we had forgotten to take some extension leads to plug in all the equipment. At the time the NEC wanted something like £25 for an extension lead so one of our sales guys volunteered to go find some at a local shop. Before he left I suggested that if he could get black ones they would look better against the black stand. OK he said and off he went.
So this guy is gone for ages and I mean 3 hours or more so we start to get worried as we haven’t heard from him, (This was before the advent of mobile phones for sales guys).
Eventually he rolls up after about 4 hours. “Bloody hell that was a nightmare he said, I couldn’t get any black extension leads anywhere”.
“Never mind I said white will have to do, how many did you get”.
“Oh I didn’t get any white ones because you said you wanted black, I’ll have to go and get some”. And with that he walked off.
In the end we bought the ones from the NEC as this plonker of a sales guys had already cost us enough time and he would have probably been gone for another 4 hours.
