When Life Gives You Lemons . . . Make Tootsie Rolls??

I got up this morning and checked my emails.  I must have been a little bit out of it as I signed into Brett's account instead.  At first I thought I was reading Doug's emails, but soon realized that I was wrong.  As I got ready to click off, this line caught my eye - "Walmart Space Request Declined."  That quickly snapped me out of my grogginess.  I knew that Brett had been working with Walmart to get permission for the Knights of Columbus to host a Tootsie Roll drive next Saturday at their store in Bloomington.  I thought that he had told me that the request had already been approved, so I was absolutely shocked by the email.  

I called Brett immediately.  He logged on instantly and confirmed what I had read.  He was able to get into the Walmart account that he had created several months ago.  It stated that his request was approved on April 10th and this morning at 6 a.m. it was changed to "opted out."  Brett was extremely frustrated as he knew that he had not opted out.  He had also spent quite a bit of time lining up fellow Knights to work the event.  It had been challenging to get ahold of Walmart in the first place, so he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do next.

In the end, Brett decided to go to mass at 10:30 a.m. and then drive out to Walmart afterward to see if there had been a mistake.  He was obviously upset, but by the time mass was over, he felt a lot better.  He had run into the person that he was co-chairing the event with next weekend.  After explaining the situation, Jon told him that this was why they did not host the event at Kroger or Target.  The local stores were in favor of the Tootsie Roll fundraiser, but the corporation would not allow it.  Walmart had been their last choice, and until this year had always set up these events with the store managers, not the Walmart corporation.  

Jon and Brett felt that the best plan of action was to still host the Tootsie Roll drive, but only at the three local Catholic churches.  They had plenty of workers to collect money at those masses.  They would then plan a different date and place for a large scale drive later in the summer.  Brett said that he would drive out to Walmart to see if there had been an error.  Neither were surprised when that led to nothing as the store hadn't even been contacted by the Walmart corporation to inform them anything about the event. 

By the end of the day, Brett had contacted all of the other Knights to let them know about the change.  Everyone was extremely supportive and one member even talked about boycotting Walmart going forward.  Although the morning had started out extremely frustrating, in the end Brett felt very good about the situation.  He had been supported by those in his group and had not let it ruin his day.  That was the best outcome that he could hope for when he first read that email this morning.