Excuse me, but what makes you think our trade show booth is your personal trash can?

The BBQ Pit
1

Last year we displayed furniture as part of our trade show booth with signs on the chairs and sofas asking people not to sit on it.

Three reasons: 1)It was loaned to us 2)Frankly we didnt want our booth to turn into the Public Lounge (esp for Ma and Pa Kettle to camp out all day when they clearly werent customers for our product OR The Rabbitt Family with their 5 fucking brats running roughshod all over our display disturbing other patrons while their inbred parents ignore their unruly behavior) 3) There really was limited space at a very busy trade show and wanted to keep traffic flowing, not havingg attendees stepping over other people knees ans feet. 4)We weren’t selling furniture it was there to add to the theme of the display

Well, a significant portion of the public being assholes, many passersby made snide remarks like “Eeerwa, Such a shame! All this nice furniture and we cant sit on it, tsk tsk tsk” or “Hey Pal theres already enough signs in this place telling you to not sit down!”

Ok we got the message so this year we tried something different-to be nice we got a bigger space and placed all the furniture at one end of the booth and let people sit.

At first it worked. Folks would come in and cool their heels for 2-3 minutes and move on. Then… the Trash moved in. LITERALLY.

Enter the slobs who decided our booth was a restaurant, dropping remnants from their disgusting cheeseteak sandwiches or dripping ice cream all over the floor. Another brushed crumbs off his pants onto our display. One dude had the balls the leave behind and empty beer can. Two others had even more balls: they asked us for napkins. Then there was the guy who asked us where our wine was. For real. WHAT fucking wine?

But then the straw that broke the camels back? The hamburger inhaling fatso wiping his greasy hand on the furniture cover!

THATS IT.

After only four hours of trying to be nice, EVERYONE LOSES:

  1. We put up No Eating signs all over the display and within 30 minutes asked 6 people, apparently illiterate, to leave. Im sure they went home telling all their family friends what assholes WE were. No matter: if you live life like a fucking pig, you probably cant afford our product anyway.

And you know what? They are RIGHT we ARE now assholes because:

  1. I already called the booth designer and told them for next year NO CHAIRS. No barstools. No ledges.

But there IS good news for all you fucking idiots who decided to use our display as a dumpster today: we will be near the bathroom so if you need a place to sit, you wont have far to take a dump just like you did to our booth this year.

After all, as we learned today there is an ass for every seat.

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2

Good choice. If a place isn’t intended as a seating area, it’s better not to put seating in it.

3

Obviously you over looked having a trash receptacle.

And the clients were just giving you suggestions. They want wine and napkins.

This could be a lucrative business.

4

Haha theres other vendors at the trade show who handle wine and food so we couldn’t serve food or beverages if we wanted to as per show contract.

Plenty of trash cans and recycling bins all over the show, including 15’ from our booth.
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5

This. I’d be annoyed by seating that’s just for show, too.

6

So you put out nice chairs in a place that many people are wandering around, and also food is being sold with people looking for a place to sit and eat, and you expect what again?

And you call the public idiots :smack:

7

What kind of trade show?

8

Seriously - why *have *chairs if no one is allowed to sit in them?

9

There were signs up telling people “Not to sit of the furniture” . People have no respect for anything today ! There are trash cans all around a park in my city and some are right near the benches yet people still throw their trash on the ground . If people can’t leave a place the way they found it they should stay home and throw in own their house ! No wonder kids are so rude today, they take after their parents !

10

Good Lord, that’s appalling. Which show were you at and what are you exhibiting ?

I used to go to trade shows on a regular basis. I went to lighting industry shows,homebuilder shows,electronics industry shows and architecture and design shows. And I’ve never seen anything like that.

I’ve seen some bad behavior, aggressive over collection of “swag” (the giveaway items such as pens, candy bars, mini-flashlights, thumb drives and earbuds that exhibitors use to draw people into their booth) being the most prominent.

And I’ve seen some of the guys in suits become visibly tipsy, especially if there’s a little cocktail hour thing on the show floor and stagger around the booths hitting on the ladies.

But it’s kind of common knowledge that any seating inside an exhibitors booth isn’t for the general public. Sometimes a customer will come in and the salesperson they need to see is busy and you need to be able to offer them a place to wait. Or sometimes it’s nice to be able to offer a good customer a place to sit for awhile and chat over a cold drink. That’s why you have seating and it’s atrociously bad manners to sit inside an exhibitors booth for longer than it takes to tie your shoelace unless you have business there.

And eating meals inside the booth was always forbidden. Snacking was sometimes OK and sometimes not, depending on the company I was working for…some were strict about no eating and others would stash bulk packs of snack-sized bags of chips and candy in the back closet. But I would never dream of actually eating lunch inside the booth. I’d brave whatever food court seating was available in the convention center or I’d just carry it outside and sit on the steps or something to get away from the insane refrigeration levels of AC that convention centers are known for.

To actually eat a meal in someone else’s booth and leave the garbage?? That’s totally beyond disgusting and bad manners. I concur in your outrage.

11

Did any of them bring their dogs with them?

12

Because what they are doing is the equivalent of somebody buying lunch at McDonalds and carrying it into the lobby or waiting room of a local business or inside a furniture showroom and sitting down for a leisurely meal.

13

Puzzlegal and RaventhiefThe chairs are there as part of the concept to give SOPHISTICATED consumers ideas about how to use our product.

I already admitted that we tried to allow customers to sit on them after last year’s reaction, so why don’t we get credit for trying something different?

That said, if there’s a chair and we ask you don’t sit in it, what makes you think YOU are so entitled to get annoyed?

What if I find there’s furniture as part of an exhibit in a museum. Why how dare a security guard chase you off for sitting on it. After all, it’s FURNITURE, isnt it? How dare a museum show off furniture as part of an exhibit but not allow morons to sit on it. Why display it in the first place if you can’t sit on it?

Just like the museum, it’s our fucking booth, we have the right to set rules to protect it, and again, frankly, the only people that complained about not sitting on the chairs… not the type of customer we would want to work with anyway! FUCK THEM

14

Italics mine. According to the OP, the seating was not originally for anyone. at all. I remain curious why have chairs and sofas to “add to the theme” if not even those waiting to meet someone at that booth were allowed to sit?

I was just at a trade show recently, and I ate at the food court. I discarded my garbage in appropriate receptacles. If a booth had seating, I might sit and peruse their literature. I used to run the booth at a very different convention/exhibit hall, and we had furniture there. It was for meetings with our execs. We had to be vigilant to make sure random people didn’t see tables and chairs and try to grab a quick meeting with someone not with our company.

I just have a hard time wrapping my head around a booth with purely ornamental seating arrangements. Why bother?

15

Just Koreans. We told them they weren’t allowed to eat in the booth either
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.ducks and runs for cover***

16

I have no idea what product you are selling, or what SOPHISTICATED customers may need to see in order to understand how to use it. I also don’t know what kind of trade show typically has a lot of families with children running around it. That is out of my sphere of experience. I think random people plopping down and demanding wine and eating lunch is appalling, as Ann Hedonia said. But I can’t se it as similar to a museum exhibit, unless you were showcasing the furniture itself and had velvet ropes.

17

The velvet ropes: not a bad idea…

18

Was this a show promoting various local businesses, open to the general public? We have tons of those where I live, especially at this time of year.

19

Well, I think most people understand that furniture in a museum is special and valuable and there to be looked at rather than used.

It’s not that surprising if people don’t make the same assumptions about the $120 Ikea loveseat or whatever in your trade-show booth.

[QUOTE=russian heel]
Just like the museum, it’s our fucking booth, we have the right to set rules to protect it
[/QUOTE]

Sure, nobody’s disagreeing that you have such a right. The point is that if people find your rules a bit counterintuitive or unexpected, you’re going to have a fair number of people inadvertently breaking them and/or deliberately challenging them.

And museum-style “don’t sit on the furniture” rules do sound a bit counterintuitive or unexpected for a trade show.

Maybe what you need instead is a nice backdrop with images of furniture instead of actual furniture?

20

Nope. Not even images of furniture. Trust me these pigs are so stupid they’d try and sit on those, too.