Ice Cream Hassles

Today there was an ice cream party at work for the whole campus, outside on the lawn. One of my coworkers sent an email suggesting that those who wanted to go should meet in our lobby and we could all walk over together. When we arrived, there were probably about a hundred people already in line in front of us, so we got in line and waited. Someone came along and asked if we were all from the same office or group, and snapped a few photos of us.

The line moved along, and when there were about ten people left ahead of us, someone came up and said, "I'm sorry, but we've run out of ice cream." I looked behind us, and there were (I'm estimating) about another two hundred people in line. We looked at each other, shrugged, and headed back toward our office. One of my coworkers turned around and said, "I thought she was kidding!" Another said, "What did they do, buy five gallons of ice cream and figure that would be enough?"

We were disappointed not to get our treats, but the predominant thought among us was, how could such an event have been planned so poorly? It was teased via email for a week. Is there no rough estimate of the number of students and staff on the campus on a given day? Would an ice cream riot have been an inappropriate response?