When you are racking up tens of thousands of dollars in exhibiting expenses, sometimes you have to work through little misunderstandings about the bills. But it's better if you're not arguing about things like your electricity while the show is going on — especially if the other guy has control of the breaker panel.

A few years ago I was working as the exhibit manager for a company that sold an electronic-response system for teachers to use in the classroom. It was a cool product, and teachers loved it, but at $4,000 for a system, landing sales required a polished presentation to showcase the product's features.

One of our best platforms was at the Texas Computer Education Association Convention and Exposition. So to woo our prospects, we outfitted a 30-by-40-foot exhibit with a 32-seat area where our CEO would give presentations throughout the day. At the end of each 30-minute talk, he randomly picked a chair number, and the person sitting in that chair would win one of the systems.

We had promoted the drawing in our pre-show marketing efforts, so the morning the show opened, attendees made a dash to our booth and immediately filled up all the chairs for the first presentation of the day. As another 20 or so attendees crowded in the booth to stand for the presentation, I began marveling at how smoothly everything was going. I should have known better, as mayhem and darkness were about to descend on our booth.

After about 20 minutes of the CEO waxing poetic about the product, everything in the booth suddenly went dark, and I stood there frozen for a couple of seconds as my brain processed what had just happened. Then, with a quick glance around, I saw that we were the only booth without power, so I scrambled to our storage room behind the podium thinking someone had hit the power switch accidentally.

Once there, I saw that the switch was fine — there was just no power coming to the booth at all. When I emerged from the storage room, all eyes, especially the CEO's, were looking at me expectantly, and I felt a sense of panic welling up in my throat. I mouthed the words "service desk" as I sprinted away from the booth and literally ran like dogs were chasing me the whole eight or 10 aisles to the show's service desk.

Mercifully, there was no line, and so, gasping for breath, I quickly told the women working the desk what had happened.

One of them tapped some seemingly random information into a computer and announced that the general contractor had shut off the exhibit's power because the credit card I gave it to pay for the charges had been declined. I was utterly dumbstruck, and for a second I stared at her like she was speaking an entirely different language. "That's impossible," I said. But she assured me that it was indeed possible, and that I should call my credit-card company if I had a question about it.

Rather than call the company, I phoned our chief financial officer back at the home office to explain the situation and implore him for help. A few moments later, he called me back with bad news and worse news. It turned out that the company had recently changed banks, and the new financial institution wasn't used to seeing more than $10,000 in material-handling charges on my credit card, so some genius there thought it was best to decline the charge rather than, say, call my company for clarification. Credit-card representatives would be sure to adjust the account for such charges in the future, the CFO said, but making the change to the account would take 24 hours. Oh yeah, and since all the company credit cards were issued through the same bank, no one else's corporate card would work either.

Now 24 seconds without power in a packed booth is a problem, and 24 minutes is a disaster. Twenty-four hours without power would pretty much be a career ender. I turned around and started running back toward the exhibit, but I confess that I saw an exit sign glowing on the wall and thought about running through those doors instead.

When I got back, I saw that the CEO was doing a juggling routine to entertain the audience. OK, that's not true. He was wrapping up the presentation — in the dark — by holding up his battery-powered laptop to show the random number selected for the prize drawing. Meanwhile, I huddled with some company managers in the back of the exhibit and explained the unfortunate situation. Bless their hearts if they didn't open up their wallets and hand me a pile of personal credit cards to cover the costs.

Sprinting again — with lungs now officially on fire — I headed back to the service desk with the fistful of credit cards, handing them over one at a time until we'd maxed out five of them and all of the exhibit expenses were covered. As I half limp-jogged back to the booth, I couldn't help but wipe my brow and wonder what I had done to screw up my exhibiting karma so profoundly.

At the booth, the seats had been filled again by a new group of attendees who didn't care that there were no lights on; they just wanted their chance at one of those classroom systems. The CEO was stalling the start of the next presentation, fully expecting a miracle, and right about the time I was dragging myself on my elbows up to the exhibit, the lights and projector sprang to life. The audience literally cheered, and I died inside a little. When your attendees are cheering in the exhibit, you'd like for it to be because they love your products so much, not merely because you have power.

I never went back and had the conversation with the general service contractor to ask company reps why they didn't run the card prior to the show opening, or why they didn't at least attempt to talk to me before cutting the power during our song and dance on the show floor. There's no question that they handled it badly, but they definitely got my attention with their presentation-ending move.

These days, I always make sure my credit-card companies are expecting some hefty charges from time to time, and I make a point of knowing who on my exhibit team has some extra credit available should I ever need it. And I've been working out on a running track so that the only thing I'm dying from is embarrassment if this ever happens again.

— Tom Poalinelli, trade show coordinator, USA Shade and Fabric Structures Inc., Dallas