Saturday morning, I went to downtown Yuma, Arizona, to Tomkins Pottery to help them with their Take-Over Fundraiser for the benefit of the Yuma Fine Arts Association. It was scheduled to run from 10 AM ’til 5 PM. As Vice President and Fundraising Chair for Yuma Fine Arts Association, I was there to help out with the crowds of people who (hopefully) would be showing up to buy pottery, with 50% of the purchase price being generously donated to Yuma Fine Arts by George and Neely Tomkins.
George and Neely have been the ceramic artists/owners of Tomkins Pottery – a popular landmark business here in Yuma, Arizona – located in the Historic Yuma Business District which is downtown for nearly 40 years.
A ‘Take-Over’ is a type of fundraiser where a business hosts a fundraising group or organization by offering to donate a percentage of their sales to the group on a certain day, or between certain business hours. People from the group hoping to benefit from the sales, come into the business to help out while the Take-Over is going on. With timely advertising about the event, your group hopes to have many people show up and buy a lot of stuff so your group gets a nice take of the sales. It benefits both the business and the group raising the funds.
The Yuma Fine Arts Association’s mission is to inspire creativity and innovation by connecting art with our community through a diverse array of exhibits, workshops, art therapy experiences (such as the Veteran’s Art Project), student art collaborations, and cultural events. We regularly have national and world renown artists on display in our downtown Art Center, which is the envy of cities many times larger than Yuma.
The Yuma Symposium is a series of demonstrations, lectures and visual presentations given by both internationally recognized and emerging artists who have demonstrated unusual talent. The Art Symposium was started by George and Neely Tomkins 36 years ago and now attracts upwards of 300 artists from around the United States and other countries.
I arrived early with a ‘Traveler’ of Starbuck’s coffee to see us through the morning hours. When I got there, Neely was almost distraught over the fact that the Symposium’s insurance company had informed her that they would not issue the one-day event insurance necessary to serve alcohol at the big closing dinner of the Symposium on Saturday night, UNLESS she could provide them with the name of a duly-certified Bartender. This is the 36th year that the Symposium is presented over 3 days in February, and it attracts nearly 300 artists from all over the United States and some foreign countries. The Saturday night dinner is the culmination of these three days.
Neely had been searching all over Yuma for a bartender with the required certification who could tend and oversee the bar for the dinner. She could not find ANYONE who wasn’t already working on Saturday night. She had to come up with someone before Monday morning or the special permit would die on the vine and the dinner would not have the beer and wine the Symposium attendees had come to look forward to and expect. Neely looked up the certification requirements the insurance company told her the bartender needed in order to satisfy them. There was a $40.00 certification course recommended online that the insurance company would accept. It was an online course, said to take about 4 hours to complete. Then a 46-question exam had to be passed at the end to get certification. You HAD to complete the entire course before they would allow you to take the exam. No skipping straight to the exam if you felt especially confident.
I told Neely not to stress anymore over this, because help had just walked in her door. Me. I told her I would take the course and get certified and serve as the ‘official’ bartender for the Saturday night dinner. I was going to be there anyway because I am registered for the Symposium. She could hardly believe it! She said the Symposium would, or course, pay for the $40.00 course fee. I immediately registered for the course on the spot, and started in on it right there on her computer in the Tomkins Pottery shop.
I was instructed by the course company that I could not be away from the computer for more than 1/2 hour, or even change my web browser, or they would log me off and I would have to start all over. About an hour into the 4-hour course, George turns on his online streaming Pandora Radio out in his studio and the Internet cuts out on my computer in the shop and I get bounced off of my course. Yikes! I figured out how to get back online with the course, and I only had to start it over back to the last section I had finished. Not too much damage done. Neely told George, in no uncertain terms, not to do ANYTHING on his computer while I was doing this course and exam.
I just want to say here, that this wasn’t a course about how to mix drinks. I had to learn all the alcohol laws in Arizona, how to identify and catch fake and/or altered Driver’s Licenses and State-issued ID Cards from all 50 U.S. States AND Territories, plus Canada and Mexico. Anybody ever seen a Driver’s License from Guam?? Do you think you could tell if it was fake if you did see one? I had to be able to spot suspected under-age drinkers or of-age people buying for their underage friends. Throughout the course, there were short little videos and then a series of questions to test whether I could spot the underaged, the drunks, the fake licenses, etc. Some were very entertaining. I had to be able to identify an impaired person a mile away and know how to deal with unruly, belligerent drunks in bars, sporting venues, festivals, Art Fairs, etc.
I had to learn and be able to identify interventions that would not get me or someone else killed by an out-of-control drunk. All the while it was strongly emphasized that if I made a mistake, I could get fired immediately and no one’s insurance would bail me out or cover me. I would be held completely responsible at a personal level and could face arrest, fines, license consequences, lawsuits, etc. Scary responsibility!
Later, George came in and asked about lunch. I told him to go down to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Mi Ranchito, and get us some take-out and bring it back. It was only a couple blocks away. He asked what I wanted and I told him “Anything that I can eat with a fork or spoon while sitting at the computer doing an emergency online bartending course.” He came back a while later with cheese enchiladas, beans, and rice lunch plates for each of us. We decided I could afford to take 20 minutes away and eat with them on one of the back pottery tables.
After lunch, I got back to the course. It took me 3 hours to complete the actual 4-hour course. Next came the exam. It was a sudden-death exam – I had to answer all 46 questions then push ‘Submit’ and it would tell me if I had passed or not. I could have retaken it, but only AFTER doing the online course over again! Jeez! I needed to pass it right then, because we were running out of time. So I took the exam – another 1/2 hour – and we held our breath and I pushed ‘Submit.” A few tense seconds ticked by and then this appeared:
We were jumping up and down hugging and cheering! Neely was saved and the Symposium Dinner was saved. We printed out several copies, and she was going to email a copy to her insurance company showing me as the Certified Bartender. I was exhausted from the tension of the whole ordeal, thinking about what would happen if I had pushed ‘Submit’ only to find I had failed. Ish. How embarrassing that would have been! I can’t even go there.
The certification company (TIPS – Training for Intervention Procedures) will send Neely an official, sealed and stamped certificate for me in 3 business days, but the online copy will be good enough to prove to the insurance company that the Symposium has an official Certified Bartender.
So this is the story of how I went to the Tomkins Take-Over Fundraiser to help out on behalf of the YFAA Board of Directors in the morning, and came home a Licensed Bartender in the afternoon. I suppose I should add this to my Resume – just in case this retirement gig doesn’t work out.
If anyone is interested, we still have sponsorships and advertising opportunities available for YFAA’s major event – A pARTy in the Park – a community-wide art fair on the Colorado River at Gateway Park in Yuma on March 28, 2015. Contact information is listed on the flyer below.
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