Typical Day
The alarm sounds at 5:00AM, and Daisy Vents rolls out of her bed and immediately grabs her smartphone. This is a huge week for her—she has two major events in the next seven days. First there's a mid-week Human Resources training for all new employees with Acme Business Corporation.
That'll be followed by this weekend's silent auction charity event—which happens to be the largest public relations happening at Chicken Wings, Inc. for the entire year.
That means it's emails before breakfast. She only sleeps because she has to.
As Daisy walks from her bed to the kitchen for a quick breakfast of leftover bagels from the business meeting she organized for Double Dutch Danishes yesterday morning, she scrolls through her agenda for the day. She quickly prioritizes her to-do list based on what needs to get done, when it needs to happen, and how difficult getting it done will be.
Daisy first rushes to Acme Business Corporation, where she's been managing events for six years. The corporation employs more than 30,000 people and has offices in New York, Chicago, London, and Topeka, Kansas. This means the majority of Daisy's responsibilities involve organizing business meetings, both in-person and virtual, with each office head to keep everyone on the same page—easier said than done (especially when Topeka forgets where the on button is).
This week there will be none of that. It's employee training week, an entirely different kind of headache. Arriving at 8:45AM, Daisy first goes to the sixteenth floor where the Human Resources Department is headquartered. She greets the receptionist, who makes a call while Daisy takes a seat in the small waiting area. The Human Resources director appears shortly afterwards.
"Daisy, thanks for stopping by. Listen, we're going to hold a five-hour training on HR policies starting at 10:00AM. We'll be training 200 employees live in the conference center downtown, and will need to coordinate cameras and an internet feed to link with fifteen other global offices for them to participate. Can you get it taken care of?"
Daisy doesn't mince words. "No problem."
Daisy gets some basic event questions answered and gets to work. Based on the needs, she'll have to book a room large enough for 200 people. She'll also have to get the IT department to wire the convention center for the streaming video links, as well as provide a sound system and projection screen for the presentation. Thankfully, she has both of those numbers on speed-dial.
10:00AM hits and the worldwide simulcast goes live. No problem indeed.
With a double espresso to keep up the momentum, Daisy drives to her go-to caterers at 11:30AM to pick up the emergency order of heavy pasta for 200.
Carbs are the key to feeding this many people under budget—and she can stay away from cheese because it's too expensive (and creates a convention full of gassy attendees).
After getting the lunch set up just in time and taking her own meal break, Daisy switches tracks at 1:00PM to planning Saturday's silent auction for Chicken Wings, Inc. The yearly silent auction raises money for people who have been displaced from their homes due to major disasters.
As it happens, a few dozen of this year's families were put on the street due to the overflow of chicken grease from a factory owned by the company. So it's more of a public relations necessity than usual.
After taking a conference call with various press outlets voicing the positive steps the company is making in proper grease containment, Daisy drives to the gallery at 3:00PM to review the artwork up for auction this year. Most are rough watercolors and lumpy sculptures done by wannabe Michelangelos and Picassos—all the art is created by Chicken Wings employees, which doesn't make for the highest-quality auction but is a neat story for the bidders.
Even though it's beginning to get dark, Daisy's day is far from over. At times like this, with two events in the same week, she often works twelve hours or more a day.
After spending two hours organizing the cleanup of today's HR seminar, she heads back to the gallery at 7:00PM. She still needs to direct the set-up for the auction and meet with the head of the charity to go over the itinerary, inventory, and, most importantly, the menu.
This is actually her favorite part of the day—tasting the incredible food. And as a bonus, it means she actually gets to eat dinner tonight.
As she leaves her informative and delicious final meeting of the day, Daisy drives back home at 8:30PM with a sense of calm about the upcoming events. She knows her hard work will result in success. Employees will be trained, worthl—er, priceless art will be bought, a charity will be helped, and thousands of mouth-watering puff pastry tartlets will be consumed—all because of her ability to put her plan into action.