My warehouse projects are this Friday and Saturday. Part of the warehouse “experience” is having cheering throngs when the winners arrive at the warehouse. For one of the very first warehouse programs (about 15 years ago), somebody had the idea to invite the Vikings cheerleaders to welcome the winners; as cheesy at it sounds, the participants ate it up. Unfortunately it didn’t often work out (time-wise or budget-wise) to keep bringing “professionals” in to cheer. That’s when we started recruiting regular employees to take a break from their desks to come root the winners on as they get off the bus. Didn’t take long before we added noisemakers and clappers for the ultimate event.
For my very first warehouse run, my winners were veterinarian pharmaceutical sales folks and I found out early on that there were four subsets of them… and they didn’t like each other. I never did figure out exactly how they were competitors but the bottom line was the client didn’t want the four groups in the warehouse at the same time. Instead of one run with about 45 winners, we had to have four runs in one day, with 8-12 winners each. That wasn’t a problem for anybody except for me. It was the first week of December and I was really worried that I wouldn’t get people out to cheer four times in one day, especially a cold day.
That’s when I thought up the hot chocolate. I ordered four big containers of hot chocolate along with cups, set up a table outside the warehouse (where folks congregate to cheer) and then four times that day poured out cup after cup of hot cocoa. It was a big hit and several folks came out repeatedly that day, one even mentioning to me that he came for the hot drink. We’ve been supplying hot chocolate at cold weather warehouse runs ever since and have added lemonade for hot weather runs. I’ve always felt proud that this was my idea.
Fast forward to this week. Since pandemic, Mondays and Fridays are work-at-home days; normally the buildings are all but empty. There haven’t been many Friday warehouse programs since the travel industry got back on its feet but there have been just enough folks who are either already on campus or willing to drive in to cheer. But Saturdays are a whole `nother matter Not only is Saturday in itself a problem — the group is big enough that we have to do a morning run and an afternoon run. We even advised the client that we couldn’t guarantee the cheering. With management’s blessing, we have an incentive set up to get folks to come in to cheer. In addition, I’ve ordered doughnuts for the Friday and Saturday morning cheerers and cookies for the Saturday afternoon cheerers. Hopefully between the company incentive and the goodies, we’ll get enough to make it exciting for the winners. Fingers crossed.
What would it take to get you to come out and cheer on a weekend?