# Excuse me, but what makes you think our trade show booth is your personal trash can? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 12, 2017, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973 "2017-03-12T02:15:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/21 "2017-03-12T04:53:51Z")
I should also point out the negative comments about not being allowed to sit on the furniture were mostly from old farts and a small amount of idiots. Many, many people walked through our booth and paid us high compliments. It was clear they appreciated our efforts and our product and respected our request to respect it and understood why we asked to not sit on the furniture. I would suggest the complainer-freeloaders who wanted to use our booth as a personal lounge were low intelligence, low sophisticstion Morlocks who like I said, probably didn’t have the means to afford our product anyway. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/22 "2017-03-12T04:58:26Z")
So what kind of product were you trying to display? ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/23 "2017-03-12T04:59:40Z")
Dixie cups:dubious: ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/24 "2017-03-12T05:05:19Z")
> [@russian\_heel](#): > > Dixie cups:dubious: The very height of sophistication, especially when highlighted by tasteful ornamental furniture! ---
**Author:** ![Absolute](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b2d939/32.png) [@Absolute](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Absolute)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/25 "2017-03-12T05:27:01Z")
This sounds like a pretty trashy trade show to me. What industry are you in? The trade shows I’ve exhibited at cost attendees least a few hundred dollars per person to attend. Certainly discourages people from bringing along their 5 children. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/26 "2017-03-12T05:36:16Z")
> [@Absolute](#): > > This sounds like a pretty trashy trade show to me. What industry are you in? > > The trade shows I’ve exhibited at cost attendees least a few hundred dollars per person to attend. Certainly discourages people from bringing along their 5 children. I hope the trade shows you frequent I include oral sex for the attendees. With a handful of notable exceptions, trade shows in my realm cost $15-75 to attend. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/27 "2017-03-12T05:48:38Z")
> [@Absolute](#): > > This sounds like a pretty trashy trade show to me. What industry are you in? > > The trade shows I’ve exhibited at cost attendees least a few hundred dollars per person to attend. Certainly discourages people from bringing along their 5 children. Seriously. The one I used to be the Booth Cop for was $600+ for a member of the industry association, in advance. Non-members paid over a grand just to wander our hallowed halls. ---
**Author:** ![russian\_heel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f05b48/32.png) [@russian\_heel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/russian_heel)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/28 "2017-03-12T05:59:38Z")
OK I was hoping it was obvious this trade show was open to the public for an admission in the range I mentioned. Does not excuse the low brow behavior exhibited in our booth yesterday or the year before. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/29 "2017-03-12T06:02:11Z")
> [@russian\_heel](#): > > I hope the trade shows you frequent I include oral sex for the attendees. With a handful of notable exceptions, trade shows in my realm cost $15-75 to attend. > [@russian\_heel](#): > > OK I was hoping it was obvious this trade show was open to the public for an admission in the range I mentioned. > > Does not excuse the low brow behavior exhibited in our booth yesterday or the year before. Not highly SOPHISTICATED attendees, then? ---
**Author:** ![Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_News_Baboon)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/30 "2017-03-12T06:34:09Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > 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? Working in architecture and interior design, I can think of many examples: Furniture covers, decorative cushions, chair attachments (like caps on the bottoms to glide furniture), etc. It doesn’t really matter what was being sold, however. They had signs up that this was a display and that should clearly have indicated they were not for use. If I went to a trade show and they had a sign as such and I didn’t think that was typical, I still would respect the sign. It’s not that hard to respect other people’s property. I can relate to this because we had an event once where we provided seating lent to us by a vendor. It was ok if people sat on them. One guy asked me if this was my furniture. I told him that no, it was not: The pieces were on loan to us. He then says “oh, so then who cares right?”, laughed like a buffoon and proceeded to put his very muddy shoes on the table. Yeah, I did care. I was the one having to clean up the table. It was uncalled for behavior on his end. ---
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/31 "2017-03-12T08:48:03Z")
First, let me say that it is extremely rude to sit when there are signs not to and nobody should use your booth as a trash can. That said, I did attend a medical convention where there were box lunches but not enough seats. While wandering the booths, I passed one with several couches surrounding a coffee table with promotional literature and pens. I sat down for a second just to rest my feet and look at the pamphlets and the person there immediately jumped on me and said "You can’t sit there ". I told them I wasn’t eating and I would be glad to listen to their spiel if they just allowed me to sit for a second. The lady guarding the place basically implied that since all the salespeople were talking to other doctors, she couldn’t let me wait there so I left. Later as I was passing by the booth again, I was stopped by one of the pharmaceutical reps who just happened to be free and also just happened to be a rep who details me in the office. I informed him that he has a product where there are basically four or five medications of the same class in competition and while all the reps know that I am a hard sell and don’t like to take freebies, the one thing that might have made me listen to his presentation for a little longer than usual was if I had been able to rest my feet while he talked. (And they were using the couches for customers to sit on while they talked). Anyway, I certainly did not get a good feeling about this particular rep from being told that I couldn’t sit on an empty couch while I waited for him to be free to talk to me. The good news is that I have an extremely poor memory for names and faces so I have idea who he was or what his product was so it likely didn’t hurt his sales. Besides, my specialty is giving drug reps a hard time anyway. ( Don’t try to BS me if you don’t have outcomes data and yes I will quote studies at you showing that an alternative medication is better. Apparently, I even made one drug rep cry, but in my defense, she was arguing that getting cholesterol numbers down with any drug was better than getting them down specifically with a statin and I simply challenged her to show me any comparative data showing better long term outcomes with her medication compared to a statin while she kept insisting that her medication must be better because the numbers were better and couldn’t seem to grasp why that didn’t immediately sell me on her product.) ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/32 "2017-03-12T09:08:18Z")
I never was involved in an exhibition open to the general public, as ours were always for professionals only. However, if you are going to exhibit to the public then you’ll get jerks like that and no matter how many signs you have, if there are seats, someone will sit down. Velvet ropes or no chairs seem like the only choice. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/33 "2017-03-12T11:33:54Z")
Perhaps you need to interact with the public a little less? Especially where the number of low sophistication types are so high? But aside from that… 1. If you want to deal with the actual trash, put a trash can visibly at the booth. NOT 15’ away. Just sayin’, it WOULD help, and it’s a small thing, if it keeps your blood from boiling, dontcha think? 2. What kind of trade show booth doesn’t possess enough duct/gaff tape and/or ribbon/string to stretch across the seats _preventing_ sitting as seen in other places? Seems like a pretty simple solution really. 3. One starts to wonder, of course, just how low class are WE that you cannot/will not even share what type of product or show this was? Yet it was open to the public! ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/34 "2017-03-12T12:43:57Z")
What next, I’m not allowed to fondle the booth babes? ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/35 "2017-03-12T12:55:21Z")
How many hemarhoid donuts did you sell? ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/36 "2017-03-12T13:05:02Z")
It’s just a side gig until he gets VC for the “monogrammed sweaters for support animals” business. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/37 "2017-03-12T13:41:39Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > Seriously - why \*have \*chairs if no one is allowed to sit in them? Where else would you display your “no sitting” signage? ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/38 "2017-03-12T14:22:56Z")
This is timely. I’m running a booth at a trade show next weekend. Actually the one I’ll be at is more of an expo for pet businesses and rescue groups, open to the general public for a small entry fee (around $10). I won’t have any furniture other than two camp chairs for myself and my worker. People will be bringing pets, mostly dogs, so inevitably something like the edge of a tablecloth will get peed on. You have to kind of take that thing in stride and don’t put things you don’t want peed on in range of being targetted. After reading through the whole thread, it sounds like some people don’t realize there are two kinds of shows like this. Those that are business-to-business and those that are business-to-customer. Its the second kind where you mostly have to deal with pigs and jerks. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/39 "2017-03-12T14:48:33Z")
Why didn’t you just Sweeney them? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2017, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973/40 "2017-03-12T15:23:07Z")
> [@russian\_heel](#): > > OK I was hoping it was obvious this trade show was open to the public for an admission in the range I mentioned. Then, IMO, it’s not a trade show, which is by vendors for their business trade partners. Trade shows are typically closed to the public, or at least throw up a high bar to keep out the pin collectors and looky lous. Shows for general public attendance and by vendors selling retail or home trade are something else, and yes, attract the Walmart and free-stuff clutter who probably don’t buy so much as a can opener. It’s the arena your company is choosing to play in and it sounds like your show runner lacks judgment in staging the booth for the actual audience. In other words, bitch all ya like but don’t expect sympathy from anyone with show experience. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-but-what-makes-you-think-our-trade-show-booth-is-your-personal-trash-can/781973.md?page=3)