plant auctopsy

[Erik Olson <erik@thekrib.com>]

Time again for the annual "what happened" post plant auction.

What worked:

  * the new scanners - didn't hear any complaints

  * auctioneers/recorders - good working relationship, Matt jumped right 
    in, that was great.  Gilead was very good about stepping back when we 
    needed to use Paul as a checkout person.

  * Paul as the "swing computer guy".  This made the difference between
    things getting completely out of hand and being manageable.  For those 
who didn't know, Paul did late check-ins, recorded the bogwood purchases 
after they all happened, did early check-outs, and fixed a few items that 
were mislabelled and such.  He also worked as recorder for Gilead when he 
was auctioning.

Room for improvement:

  * computers brought in by other people was a complete bust.  Worst  case 
we've ever seen with neither of them working.  I think for future 
auctions, perhaps I need to test and install drivers the weekend before.  
This zapped a LOT of time in the setup.

  * Need to be on the same page for checkout.  Lots of new people, so I 
understand how it got chaotic.  But what has worked in the past has been 
for the recorders to take peoples' money, with the treasurer shuttling 
around if they need change, but the key being that the treasurer is 
nowhere near that printer.  Once the person has paid, THEN the recorder 
pulls down the payment list and hits the button that causes the printout 
to start in the back area.  A runner picks up the printout and brings up 
their stuff.  This is always the bottleneck, so let's keep people OUT of 
that area and.

  * Wasn't clear on split checks.  This is my fault.  There are two 
options here.  If the person is doing an early checkout and wants their 
splits later, the recorder can pull down "pay XXX now and receive check 
later".  If the person wants to get their split immediately (and the 
treasurer is willing to give this to them), then the recorder can pull 
down the "pay now including split" option.

  * It was hard to get info from the manula recorder (Judy) because she 
was sitting on one end instead of the middle.

  * THe new version of the software is incompatible with Auto Complete.  
We should make sure this is off in the future.

  * BIG problem with people checking out early and then bidding on more 
stuff WHILE IN LINE WAITING FOR THEIR STUFF.   Not good.  Any suggestions 
on how to combat this?  Keep their card?  Just announce this at the 
beginning?

  * Bogwood sales should probably be done in the style of "silent auction" 
with a computer and recorder.  I wanted to do this, but didn't anticipate 
that all "three" of the extra computers wouldn't work.  We do NOT want to 
have to have the bidder pay twice.  Thankfully, because Paul backfilled 
these from the receipts, only one bidder (Sandy Gibsobn) was affected by 
this.

Checking the numbers, things look complete.  It says Joe Hughes is owed a 
split check for $67.80 -- I don;t know if this was paid already.

Stats from the computer:
Gross was $1636.78, less $453.60 split to sellers, less about $500 for 
plants and bogwood.  322 items, 43 bidders.  I beleive in previous years 
the bogwood didn't count in these numbers.  Pretty cool though, a record 
number of items sold yet again:

                2004    2003    2002    2001    2000

bidders         43      30      34      39      38
lots            322     264     259     231     260
gross $         1636    1327    1180    1624    1479
splits $        453     265     150     403     413

That's over two items per minute, by the way...

  - Erik
  
-- 
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com


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