The Grand Opening that almost was

I worked feverishly to get ready for today’s Grand Opening. I had it all planned. I bought 50 individually wrapped cherry turnovers from our famous Seaquist Orchards bakery. We had 50 chairs set up with plenty of space between them for social distancing. I had gotten a bunch of responses from people who wanted to attend the Zoom presentation I planned to give.

A friend of mine named Kathy Plahmer came over this morning and took over some computer work that was really frustrating to me because it wouldn’t work the way I wanted it to. Thank you, Kathy, for taking that load off me.

Another friend, Kathy Rimsha, went to the bakery first thing this morning to pick up the cherry turnovers and then met us at the Kress Pavilion at 1:00 to help us get set up. We were told that the doors were unlocked, but they weren’t, so Kathy stood downstairs to open the doors for people and direct them upstairs.

Three people showed up.

Mark and I started at 2:00 to get the Zoom meeting set up. I had the passcode, the meeting ID, and my personal ID for the meeting and it wouldn’t recognize any of those. I could have tried to get into it through Facebook, but I had brought Mark’s laptops, not mine, because I wanted my guests to buy from my website on a computer that would have the customer view, and I couldn’t remember how to get into my Facebook page. There was a way to say I forgot my password and I clicked on that and put in my email address. It said it had sent the password to my email address, but nothing came. I clicked several times to have them resend the code they needed to verify my identity and I refreshed my email page numerous times, but the code never came. One of the guests suggested I check my spam filter, but there was nothing there either.

One of the women who had signed up for the Zoom presentation called me to see why the meeting wasn’t opening. At least I got to explain to her what was going on and she said she’d tell her friend who was also sitting in front of her computer. I felt just awful!

I finally gave my presentation to the three guests and Kathy and Mark. When I finished, they came to buy some kits, and when I tried to have them buy them on my website, it didn’t work! They wrote me checks.

I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am. I did make five sales today and that’s five more than I had before, but I am so embarrassed that the people who signed up for the Zoom meeting didn’t even know why it never happened. I have written on my Facebook page and on my website to apologize profusely and say that I’ll try to schedule another Zoom meeting this weekend that I can run from home. Hopefully, that will work.

Thank you to those of you who said you were praying for me. Please continue to do so until I can successfully reach my online customers.

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