Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! First things first, I need to give another shout out to Santa Clause and my amazing Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones. I showed up for my flight to Orlando on Tuesday and I found the gate area FULL of children. Not like a lot of families but a FIELD TRIP full of children. Maybe middle school aged? I remember going to Disney for a high school field trip but I'm sure we behaved much better than these children ;)
So I'm in Orlando for a business trip. Same shit, different day. This was a nice small conference so I was looking forward to getting some work done in my down time. My attendees, speakers, and conference chair had other ideas for my "free" time...
1. Socially inept coworker - Imagine if you will, Chewbacca. Just wanted to give you a visual of what I was working with. Now add in: throat clearing, poor social skills and personal space issues. Fun times. At one point, Chewy, told me he needed to use my laptop to log on to the network to work on a story he was writing. Fine, whatever. Who am I to get in the way of actual work? When Chewy was done working on my computer he looks up at me and says, "so you like '80s music?" Um, yeah sure...why do you ask? Chewy had opened my itunes and was going through all of my music!!!! I very calmly said to him "your computer privileges have expired, please step away from the laptop." I felt violated.
2. Creepy Sales Guy - During a smaller conference like the one this week in Orlando I sit outside the meeting room at the registration desk. There I sit minding my own business working on my laptop. All of a sudden I have the relatively good looking guy standing in front of me. He asks me about the conference and proceeds to tell me that he is interesting in speaking with our attendees about the IT ish that he sells. Nice try. But he's relatively good looking so I keep him talking, it's gets boring at the registration desk... BIG mistake. For the rest of the time I'm there he comes by every hour on the hour to chat. OMG - go away. Saw the wedding ring, heard about your wife and two kids and trust me...I'm ALL set (wasn't that interested to begin with).
3. Pushy Speaker - Part of my job includes taking care of all speaker logistics and thus we tend to form a decent rapport at the conference itself. On Friday while I was listening to my '80s music in itunes and avoiding creepy sales guy, pushy speaker came out to talk to me. He apparently came from the same school as Chewbacca and wanted to know what tunes I was listening too. Argh, can't people just leave me alone? He then proceeds to tell me about his son who has some songs for sale on itunes. In an effort to be polite I smile and tell him how cool that must be for him. No sooner had I put my headphones back in to indicate the conversation was over then he reached into his pocket and handed me CASH to download his son's music. WHAT?!?!?! Awkward. First of all, I could not take his money and second of all who does that? I politely decline with the promise to investigate the music on my own. Pushy agreed and went back into the meeting only to come right back out with his iphone. He handed it to me and said hear, listen on my iphone and decide for yourself. I was 100% trapped. How do you get out of that? Thank GOD Jen called like one song into this little scene. I had the perfect reason to excuse myself. I heart Jho.
So if you ever wondered what I have to put up with while I'm on site at a meeting that was just a glimpse. There was an extra dose of Crazy in the water in Orlando. I'll be happy to board my flight in like an hour!!!
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