Day 2

This weekend, I worked with another business and ran a program where, one morning, families can come and donate their kids gently used Halloween costumes from previous years and exchange them for one that will fit them this year. In the end, the remaining costumes are donated to a local non-profit day care center that serves an extremely poor community. The concept is fantastic and implementing it isn't that hard, but as with everything, one bad apple can spoil the bunch. Obviously the process described above is not foolproof. Here are some hypothetical situations that can arise. Note again that these may be are hypothetical situations.

• If 25 people show up and donate costumes sized for one year olds, chances are that the one person that shows up with a 9 year old will not find anything in his size.
• I'm sorry if your child is afraid of our clown.
• If the event is advertised as starting at 10am and you show up at 930am, that doesn't mean that everyone else is late.
• If the event is advertised as taking place at 11am sharp and you show up at 1130am, I apologize if there isn't anything left for you to choose from. Please don't send me hate e-mail.
• Although all of the costumes are being donated by my company to a non-profit organization, I can not give you a receipt to write your donation off on your taxes because I am not a qualifying non-profit organization. Please don't spend 10 minutes arguing with me about this, after you show up 15 minutes late.
• If you go to an event and start an argument with the person running the event for any of the reasons described above, please do not take 5 of our goody bags with you as you storm out the door.

Because this is a gratitude journal, there is some good that I can find. The people that came to the event, had fun, got costumes and were happy to make donations made it all worth it. The non-profit day care center that will now have 20 extra costumes for their kids to wear in their Halloween parade made it all worth it. The fact that I was able to organize an event to bring people together to show that even if they can do something small, it helps - that's what made it all worth it. And I was glad to have been able to do so.