Event planning is a major industry, and it takes a lot of work to make sure a huge event goes off without a hitch.

When the planner in this story booked a huge client, he was excited, but when she kept paying late and backing out on other promises, he got nervous.

When the day of the big event came, it was nothing like he expected it to be.

Read on for all the details.

The Ultimate Family Fun Day Failure

Now we cater for dinky weddings of say 100 guests, to very large fun days that host as many as 7,000 visitors.

This is the story of one of those Family Fun days.

Wow, this is a huge event.

Our client, had booked us 6 months prior. We where to be the host venue for her Family fun Day event. We where told that expected visitor numbers would be around 7,000 guests.

We had informed her that this was fine, here was the hire price and what she was expected to supply (namely a lot of health & safety, layout plans, skip for waste disposal, contact details for all her staff.

Basically a bunch of stuff to cover our butts and to make it absolutely clear what we would and would not supply/do)

Sometimes you have to take a hard stand.

Alarm bells began to ring when continual calls for payment of her outstanding balance where met with “I’ll pay tomorrow.” and “oh I’m meeting with an investor who’s providing some of the finance. I’ll have the funds to you by next Monday.”

Eventually this was only solved by the simple threat that we would be scrapping the event date and seeking litigation for the outstanding balance.

We’ll I say solved, in truth the money was coming in small amounts here and there.

Not what we expected.

Getting payment in full is priority #1.

In this case our standard procedure is for all accounts to be settled 1 month prior to the event.

But for this client I’d been sticking my neck out for, because in all our conversations she appeared to know what she was doing.

But even my patience ran out when we still had not received all the money.

Hopefully she is taking this seriously.

The day before the Family Fun day arrived. I informed the client by phone that if she didn’t come up with the outstanding balance today we would not open.

She had until 6pm that day.

At 5:15pm she arrived in my office. She pleaded to be allowed to host the event tomorrow, that we would get paid on the day.

Why does she think she can get away with not paying?

Many tears where shed.

I insisted balance must be paid and that her time was running out.

As if by magic money appeared.

She was still short but with the bulk paid and with about 20% left outstanding I let it slide on the promise that the remaining funds would be paid on the day of the event.

Never trust people like this.

Stupid, stupid me.

Now she arrived at 5:15pm and we close at 6pm if we do not have an event on that day (hence the deadline). She told me just before closing “Oh the fun fair people, just called they will be here at 8pm.”

Sorry what? Oh of course, she hadn’t told me that there where people coming the night before to set up. Fantastic.

My dinner plans with the wife and my parents are shot. The owners (rightly) said this one was on me.

I can’t believe how much he is willing to do for this client.

So, I said to the client “fine, but I’m going home now to have a quick bite to eat, I probably won’t be back before 9pm. Call me when the fairground rides arrive.”

Now this delay meant I left late, bout 6:30pm. 5 minutes before arriving home (Just before 7pm) she calls to say the rides have arrived.

I mentally, scream she said 8pm!

He should really take his time.

I tell her they will have to wait until I’ve eaten and can get there. I have my dinner and leave at speed, arriving back to find all the rides blocking a chunk of the main road.

Christ we’ll have the local authorities on our backs if we’re not quick. Why the client couldn’t have directed them to a nearby side road I have no idea!

Setting up something so big takes a lot of work.

Anyway I open up the site again and set up begins. for those of you who don’t know, even with the best will in the world 4 hours is the average set up time for larger fun fair rides.

I didn’t leave the site until around midnight.

This client went as far as suggesting this was all my fault we all had to leave so late.

What? This lady is insane.

She even suggested I should leave the keys to the site with her.

No, I’m not giving you the keys to the place!

To cap it all off I had to give her a lift home because her car had broken down (according to her, this turned out to be a lie. In actuality she had been caught driving without insurance and without having a proper driving license.

So, the car had been impounded and she fined.).

Honestly, I’m not even surprised at this point.

Oh and do you know what other little pearl of wisdom I gleaned. The fun fair operators could have been on site at 5pm, but they hadn’t been given our address by the client!!!!

Roll on the next day. 8:45am myself and a colleague where on site. Vendors selling at the event begin arriving at 9:00am sharp.

Many had travelled in from various bits of the country (anything more than 2 hours away by car in the UK is classed as far).

This is a huge event.

We also had security staff arriving.

Where was the client? At home as it turned out. She turned up 45 minutes late for her own event.

Needless to say we started getting worried as did the vendors. At some point during this time the fun fair people also arrived and finished setup a few minor bits and pieces.

So, she turns up. On her own. For these events you normally need a team of 3 or 4 people to oversee and manager it. Guess who ended up having to step in?

They are really going above and beyond for someone who is such a terrible client.

So, we try to help organize the lay out but of course the client hasn’t created any sort of lay out plan.

Vendors are getting annoyed at being continually told to move before they can set up properly.

And we are continually asking her questions to which is rapidly becomes clear she has no clue.

Important point – The client had hired in a generator to provide power for a number of the vendors.

She is just the worst!

We had repeatedly told her if that generators needed to be placed in the middle of the vendors who where taking power of it (think of the generator as a square, thus accessible from all four sides.).

Did she listen? Nope.

She had the generator placed so that it was accessible from only 1 side and we ended up having cables snaking all over the place as a trip hazard.

It became apparent that our advice was falling on deaf ears.

The vendors might just leave.

The lay out for the vendors requiring power was so bad that two vendors ended up being partially blocked off from the main group, thus making it difficult for members of the public to reach them.

Well it would have done if there had been a public trying to reach them.

These things can be very popular.

With everything finally ready, vendors in place, rides up and running we opened the gates. The parking overseen by 9 security staff she had hired for the day, as everyone was expecting quite the crowd.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

In fact 2 hours after opening I think we’d had about 20 visitors.

Something was very, very wrong.

Did she do any advertising?

Time ticked on and it became quite clear that the general public did not know that the event was taking place.

A thin trickle of visitors turned up but nothing like what was promised.

The vendors became increasingly irate and demanded to know were all the promised visitors where. The fun fair folk meanwhile began to approach our client for assurances that they where going to get paid for the day. A sum of £2,000.

Oh, I very much doubt that they will get what was promised to them.

They had been hired for the day you see, with our client keeping all takings gathered from the ride. And they had come on the promise of being paid on the day.

A practice it turned out our client had used on many people in order to get her Family Fun Day up and running.

Our client was treading water. Her ship was sinking fast and there where sharks in the water after blood. It wasn’t just the fun fair people she owed money too.

Apart from them and our outstanding balance, she also owed money to the security team and a number of people who had lent her money on the promise of a speedy return of their loan.

I would have expected it to be even more.

By my calculations she owed between £6,000 and £7,000 MINIMUM.

The promised visitors never appeared and by 4:30pm the fun fair ride operators demanded to be paid or they would cease to operate.

The rides where turned off and they took from our client the little money that had been earned. The paltry sum of just £100. It transpired that the generator was also hired from them.

So that was also switched off.

This situation could become dangerous.

Chaos erupted.

Suddenly vendors where without power and no possibility of an alternative source. The security staff attempted to pick a fight with the fun fair operators to try and take some of the money they’d received.

The visitors who had come to the event began to complain mightily that they had paid to go on rides that now where not running. The vendors in general where up in arms. The police where called.

I would be angry, not embarrassed.

I have never in my working life felt more embarrassed for another human being.

The time and money that was lost by all parties probably topped out at close to £20,000.

Throughout the entire fiasco our client continually and repeatedly stated that she had advertised extensively.

When fighting broke out between the security staff and the fun fair operators over the little money that had been earned the police pulled the plug on the entire operation, insisting it be shut down immediately.

Once again, why help this lady?

I and my colleague had to take the client into my offices and securely lock it them away for their own safety.

From 4:45pm (yes folks all the above happened in just 15 minutes!) onwards there followed a long painful shut down process as vendors began packing up at varying degrees of speed.

Some desperately trying to sell to the other vendors the fresh food they had prepared for the day. Others simply started giving it away for free. The security staff for the most part had bolted when the police arrived.

Angry parents and sad children watched on as the fair ground rides where packed away.

Why would they waive the debt? Sue them!

Our client left at 6pm, guided home by their partner who had arrived to try and stem some of the justified torrent of anger being thrown at her.

We informed them that we would be waiving the existing debt but that they where barred from hosting any future events with us.

Remember dear reader I had mentioned the need for events organizer to have a skip and staff to help out? Well that hadn’t happened of course.

Wow, what a horrible experience.

This left my colleague and I to clear up all the rubbish. By the time the last vendor left and we’d finished clearing the site it was close to 9pm. That’s nearly 4 hours of litter picking folks and getting covered in all maner of crap.

The only saving grace that none of the anger was directed at myself or my colleague as we where victims just as much as everyone else.

In fact there was the slim chance that the fun fair operators might want to use our site for a fun fair in future, but I’m not holding out too much hope.

So there you have it, the most epic of client mess ups I have had the mis-pleasure of experiencing.

What a nightmare, but honestly, a lot of this was the guys own fault for continuously letting the client lie and delay on payment.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about it.

This commenter has to do better than the lady in this story.

I was wondering this as well.

It sounds like it was a charity fundraiser to me.

They should all sue her.

This commenter is spot on.

Family fun turned into a nightmare for everyone.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.