One For The Record Books

The 2016 MRFC Fruit Tree Sale is now history, and if you missed it, well, you really missed it.

This year a new tree sale committee--- the 4 D's of Diane, Donna, Dale, and Dennis--- took on the complex task of putting together the event under the tutelage of veteran organizer Betty Kearns. They showed an impressive learning curve, as well as the heart to overcome every obstacle and setback along the way.

My tree sale role is far from the publicity end, but my sense is that the effort was extraordinary. When the doors into the sale room were opened at 10:00, it looked like the news videos of Black Friday shoppers rushing into the stores on the day after Thanksgiving. The convention center was packed solid for the next three hours.

As chief bean counter, I spent much of those first three hours raking gobs of cash, checks, and tree sale chits from cashier's boxes into my blue plastic box for transport to the two counting rooms--- one for receipts, and one for the chits. The queues for the two cashier areas stretched clear across the main room, turned toward each other at the far end, and at one point even met in the middle. I heard that the waiting time for checkout reached one hour. I haven't verified that, but it sounds about right.

We managed to enlist two extra cashier-tag puller teams for a while, and that helped some. The MRFC owes a huge thanks to all the frontline heroes who transacted the sales of 4,500 plants with, as we'll see, remarkable accuracy.

Vendors reported heavy buying, continuing even after the incredible rush of the first three hours. As we neared the 4:00 closing, many of the vendor areas were almost empty.

In the secure area of the counting rooms, pal Kevin and I made many, many little piles of cash. I noticed after a while that all of Kevin's had exactly 10 bills in them, of the same denomination. That made it easy to total them for our bank deposits, while Birgitte and Betty totaled the checks. The bank's cash-counting machines and check tallies agreed exactly with our totals, a perfect count. Am I bragging? You betcha!

But that was the easy part. The hard part was sorting chits for 4,500 plants, first by vendor, then by amount, and then computing each vendor's total. The credit goes to Betty, Birgitte, and several of their able helpers. Multiple recounts had to be made, as the sticky chits were a nightmare to handle, but after days of work, the reconciliation spreadsheet showed our expected and actual totals to be within 0.18%, that is, an error of only $1.80 per thousand dollars. That's the smallest percentage error in the four years I've been involved with the sale, a remarkable achievement.

Overall sales were up 25%--- yes, 25%--- from last year's record. Expenses were about the same as last year's. I think you can see where this is heading--- let's just say that our club is in a sound financial position that will maintain our many activities through the coming year.

I've already lauded our tree sale committee, and Betty has done a wonderful job of everything except carrying out her wish to retire from the job after so many years leading the sale. And all of the members (and non-member draftees) who contributed in so many different ways should share in the pride. Of course there are some things we can do better next year, starting with more cashiers and tag pullers on shorter shifts. But needless to say, this is one for the record books.