A Tough Spot

As senior global events program manager at Cisco Systems Inc., I've faced many booth-carpet fiascos over the years. But all my carpet competency didn't adequately prepare me for the stress-inducing stain I encountered when setting up for the 2006 Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC) in Minneapolis.

Given our busy show schedule, my company often transports our exhibits directly from one to show to another, sometimes holding them at en-route storage locations or at a show's advanced-warehouse facilities. Thus, for HITEC, our booth was arriving from Orlando, FL, where it had recently been used at the SAP Sapphire Show.

My colleague, David, who managed our exhibit at Sapphire, warned me that at the close of the show, one of our staffers had been tossing around a fluid-filled stress ball - a giveaway from a neighboring booth - when the toy exploded, spewing fluorescent yellow liquid onto our booth's light-gray carpeting. As a result, a 12-inch diameter spot shone like the hot Florida sun from the center of one of our 10-by-20-foot carpeting strips.

David and his crew tried to remove the stain before shipping it my way, but it wouldn't budge. Resigned to defeat, David alerted me that we'd need new carpeting for HITEC. This didn't seem like that big of a deal. New carpet would be sent from our exhibit house, and it would arrive at HITEC in time for setup. I would simply roll out the new gray carpet and set up the rest of the booth. Little did I know, my carpet conundrum was far from over.

Two days before the show, we arrived for setup and found our entire booth, including the yellow-spotted rug, in our space. Our new, clean roll of carpeting was scheduled to arrive that same day, which meant we had plenty of time to set up.

An hour or so later, I learned that the truck carrying our new carpet had arrived. Unfortunately, the carpet was in the back of a very full truck, and it would take two hours before the union crew could get to it. What's more, the workers were clocking out for an hour-long break, so it would be a minimum of three hours before the carpet would be installed.

We decided to lay out the old padding and hope that our new carpet would be unloaded by the time we were through. An hour later, we checked on the carpet, but there hadn't been any progress.

I knew there was no time to waste. My installation-and-dismantle crew and I laid out the old carpet, which had already been cut into two smaller 10-by-20-foot strips for transport.

Since the spot fell in the middle of our booth's traffic path, we couldn't cover it with furniture. Thus, we decided to cut through the middle of the stained carpet strip and rotate it 180 degrees, so the stained section ended up covered by a storage room.

Thanks to our creative thinking, no one noticed the spot. But as the sun set on our blazing-yellow stain, we all agreed that we won't be rolling out the red carpet for stress-ball giveaways any time soon.

- Lisa Lawley, senior global events program manager, Cisco Systems Inc., Kennesaw, GA