The Potty House Predicament

The potty house predicament was and eye opener. When your portable restroom vendor decides to change the rules during your wedding season, you have a come apart, right?! This is not supposed to happen. I mean, everything is going along as planned and then you get “the” call. Change of plan, What?

How do you deal with a frustrating vendor situation? I have weddings from about mid-May through the first weekend in October. Our vendor, who does a great job and has become a friend, brings the restrooms in for the first wedding and then leaves them on the property until the last wedding.

He comes in after every event to clean them so they are fresh and clean for the next wedding party. Sometimes we have two weddings a weekend so he makes an extra trip out to service the restrooms. This is an extra charge that I am glad to pay.

Every year

Every year he asks for a schedule which I am glad to give even though it changes because my venue is not always booked up yet when I send the schedule. This has been fine in years past but not last year. I added another wedding to a weekend which meant an extra cleaning and I got “the” call.

I was told I just couldn’t add weddings during the season if it meant an extra trip out.

“Okay, I didn’t know that.”

“Well it’s usually okay” he said, “but not now”.

“Um, so I’m confused? No more two event weekends then?”

“Well, no I don’t mean that, just call before you want to book a wedding and I’ll let you know if I can do it”

Lol! So, I must send a schedule but he doesn’t have one that he can give me of when I can and can’t book weddings?

I really like him and he does a great job, but can you sense my frustration?

He said he would show up and clean it this last time, but he didn’t. He was teaching me a lesson, a hard lesson, but I got it.  It was the last wedding of the season and it worked out fine, but this sent me on a search of what I was going to do next year.

Post: DIY Outdoor Hand Wash Station

Doing  Research:

• I called around to other vendors in the portable restroom business.  Denison Ridge is far from the main city. To change vendors would not be cost effective.  And, like the vendor I use they do not like to make extra runs. They like the once a week schedule.

• I visited a few venues in my area that used portable restrooms and they only cleaned out once a week, even if they had two events on the same weekend. A good mop down on the inside and then rinse with the hose makes them nice again.

• The website states restrooms are cleaned before each event.  Consequently we chose to only have one wedding a weekend this year (less business☹). We didn’t want to call all the time and ask if it was okay to book an extra wedding.

• Next year I will remove anything about the portable restrooms. In my research, I found out that most vendors don’t mention portable restrooms on their website. It’s not a secret of course but you find out about it on the venue tour.

• Portable restrooms are very common at outdoor venues in our area. Everyone thinks of the park “outhouse”, which is disgusting for sure, but they are not like those. The restrooms my vendor brings are very nice. I have had no complaints.

Lesson learned

Hard lesson learned, be thankful anyway.  I was “not” thankful through this process! I was irritated to the max. However,  once I settled down I realized the whole thing was a learning experience.

I  don’t always understand why I go through the trial. However, there is usually a lesson that can be learned. I have a new plan for the next year and it will probably include some two-event weekends.

While I’m a bit leery of the portable restroom vendor, I will continue to purchase from him. He does a good job and I will not ask for anymore “extra” cleanings.

Update: This post was written two years ago. We now only do one wedding a weekend and we are fine with that. In order to do two weddings a weekend we would need to hire more help because the children have moved on with their own lives now.

We actually love the one weekend wedding, so much less stress, rushing and worry. This is not our only income. Also, we also just moved our guest count from 200 to 150. We see so many venues closing because it is SO much work.

It’s important to keep going so making things more manageable for us is just good business. We are on the downhill side of paying off our house which was our goal. Have you run into a potty house predicament?