Pictureka

When I was on my week off of work, a memo came down from the big wigs at home office saying to get rid of all the Pictureka Flipper games we had in the store. I don't know exactly why, but I believe it's because we had 98 in our inventory and there was no way we needed to have them anymore. I know the same memo went to the other stores in our district, so it wasn't just one isolated item in one store. One of the assistant managers knows I have some connections and asked that the pallet be put aside until I got back. She asked me to find out about donating the games, to which I knew exactly who to talk to. :) After making about 30 phone calls to various non-profits in the county, as well as talking to my boss at Huntsman and the volunteer coordinator at University Hospital (across the street from HCI) I managed to get all 98 games donated. I was elated.
I went in to talk to another manager at the store to find out how I could get all 98 out of the store without it looking like I'm stealing them all. He asked who authorized me to call and get the donations set up, who authorized the donations at all, and as soon as those words passed his lips, I had a huge pit in my stomach. I didn't have access to the memo, and after calling all the other stores in the county to find out if they had a copy of the memo (none of them did) I felt that pit growing deeper and deeper. I wanted to burst out in tears because I was letting 98 kids and families down. I spent a good two hours calling around and trying to track down a copy of that stupid memo. Luckily someone knew how to find it and printed off a copy. I was able to show it to the other manager, who was happy to see the verbiage "donate or destroy." I was SAVED!
I loaded up all the games (two car loads, almost) and made my way. Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, Timpanogos Hospital, Family Support & Crisis Center, Huntsman Cancer Institute, University Hospital, American Fork Hospital, The Ronald McDonald House, VA Hospital, and Shriner's all received a portion of the games. I have one more drop off to make tomorrow, and then the games are gone. I am seriously thinking of trying to form a contact at our home office to try and work something out. My store manager said that there's a possibility to get something worked out for donations and charitable contributions if I have a partner on a corporate level. Knowing how much can be donated on a daily basis would be so incredible to get worked out. I think I know what I'm going to do when I get into work tomorrow morning.