Friday night I had the pleasure of working at a black tie gala dinner and learning that being a professional auction assistant is definitely not one of my life’s callings. The silent auction side of things wasn’t too bad, I was mostly tasked with carrying around objects and smiling vapidly as I displayed them to extremely wealthy people. Though it is surprisingly difficult not to say things that could be misconstrued as suggestive when trying to sell a giant toy penguin to men in their 50s. “It’s sooo cuddly!” “He’s really nice and soft, and very cute too!” All of these comments suddenly sound even more ridiculous when the person I’m saying them to is wearing a suit worth more than my entire wardrobe, while they are sipping champagne and eating scallops. The penguin did, however, receive the most interest out of the items I carried, so I must’ve done something right!
No, the disaster came during the grand auction. Us volunteers didn’t receive much guidance on what to do, except to stand at strategic places throughout the hall and assist the auctioneer in spotting bids by elegantly raising our clipboards with one hand and, with a gentle swooshing movement, point to the bidder. Except, this is definitely not how things went down. No, no, no. During one lot, a woman in my area raised her hand to bid, so I raised my clipboard and arm-swooshed as instructed, but the auctioneer instead put the bid on the table I was standing closest to, not the table I was pointing to. But when I tried to correct him, he then raised the bid by £500. And then when trying to correct that he raised it again by another £500. And then no one else “bid” (I’d given up flapping by then, all grace lost), the original woman won the lot but for £1,000 more than her actual bid. At this point I did what any grown up, mature adult would do and ran away from that section as fast as I could, before someone started throwing their cutlery at me.
I spoke to other volunteers after that little incident and found they had similar problems, where the auctioneer would either act like they were bidding themselves or not attribute the bid to the correct person, but unlike me they were lucky in that other people placed higher bids afterwards. (Though one volunteer had a hairy moment where it looked like he had accidentally purchased a trip to Spain for £8,000.)
It was all sorted out in the end and no one threw food at me. So, I would chalk this up as a win, wouldn’t you?
Travels and Tea Leaves 