Handling Time Delays

“Wait…we’re actually starting early?”

The principal smiled proudly. “Yup,” he said. “We get it DONE!”

I was stunned and even more thankful I had managed to pull everything together as quickly as I had.

The morning was not fun. I hit major traffic on my way to this school. Despite giving myself plenty of ‘get lost’ time, Traffic issues, rude drivers, and unclear signage made me late arriving at the school.

Parking issues put me further behind, meaning I had to scramble to be ready on time. In fact, I was backstage carefully assembling my Losander table as the kids were coming in.

After I breathlessly emerged from backstage, I was amazed to see the majority of my audience waiting as the last class entered, a good 7 minutes before my scheduled start time.

I expressed my admiration to the principal and started my show.

In my experience, live shows rarely start on time. And it doesn’t matter the market: daycares, birthdays, schools, corporate events, or fairs. My shows rarely start on time. The delays are different for every market:

Birthdays: The parents hosting the party always want to wait for that last kid on the guest list who is running late.

Childcare centers: The director waits for the last class to arrive.

Schools: In my experience, most schools don’t start calling the classes to the assembly area until five minutes before the show start time. When you’re moving 200-300 kids through the hallways, it always takes longer than five minutes. A lot longer.

Corporate: The biggest delays I’ve experienced come down to meal services or awards running behind schedule.

The delays are always out of my control. And I’ve just accepted it’s part of the job. Moist of the time, delays don’t affect me. But if you’re new to performing professionally, I have some things you’ll need to keep in mind when moving forward.

When a birthday show is delayed, you’ll have to consider how it will affect the remainder of your day. I haven’t worked birthday parties diligently in over a decade. But when I did, I usually had two or three birthdays a day on Saturdays and Sundays.

If your first show is delayed, it may affect your ability to get packed up and on to your next show on time. When booking multiple birthday parties a day, I would build in time buffers, and cushions of time in case things ran long or I ran into traffic delays.

You’ll have to decide how you’re going to handle delays when they threaten to bump up into your next show’s schedule.

Many performers put it in their contracts that shows must start within fifteen minutes of the agreed-upon time or incur additional charges. I never did that because I could never get clients to agree to it when I would send them the paperwork.

Most of the time I’d just gently explain things to the parent and they would understand and just let me start the show, late child or not.

Darecares, same thing. I’d have three or so shows in one day, often for the same chain. I’d explain the situation and the director would accommodate me.

Schools are a bit trickier. Part of stems from the sheer number of kids Part of it stems from administrators not wanting to allot more ‘travel time’ from classrooms to the assembly area. They want to maximize class time.

The challenge I run into with delayed start times is bumping into lunches or dismissal times. If we start the show late, I always ask my client how much time from the end of my show to lunch or dismissal.

The last thing I want is to be in the middle of a routine and have a bell go off, and my audience stands up to leave. Yup, it happened at a school about fifteen years ago. Now I always ask, every single time it looks like we will be starting late.

Corporate? That’s the one that used to drive me nuts the most. Some of these delays would be an hour or more. It came down to a combination of slow meal service and longer-than-expected speeches and awards proceedings.

The only time I ever got frustrated with a client was when, at an event with 400 people in attendance, my contact instated everyone would be served dinner and plates cleared in 30 minutes. For 400 people.

I told her there was no way they’d get through meal service that fast for so many people. And I had another gig I had to get to.

After 45 minutes, when the guests were not even finished with their appetizers, my client reluctantly admitted I was right. I started my show before dinner was served and everything went fine.

I admit I allowed myself to be treated like a doormat for many corporate events. I didn’t enforce strict start times. I rarely had more than one corporate event in one evening, so I just gritted my teeth and dealt with it.

What about you? Do you have a policy in place to deal with delays?

A lot of these issues can be cleared up in advance when you’re securing the gig. Thankfully, I’m getting more and more prospects reaching out via phone instead of email.

Not sure how to handle incoming calls from prospects? I’ve got a great resource HERE.

Have a great week! 

--Cris

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