Hotel

Leave it to my Boss to turn a four hour internal motivational meeting into a two day ordeal wasting both time and money and leaving pretty much every employee embittered.

I flew down to Raleigh, NC on Wednesday for this meeting to be held Thursday morning. Raleigh is in the South but not the Deep South. People still hospitable, talk funny and move slowly, but they have more of their teeth.

The meeting was scheduled in the morning which made it convenient for my Boss to depart that afternoon on to the next city / group of victims. It also made it impossible for the rest of us to fly in during the morning, have the meeting, and fly home to our families that evening.

So the 20 people who weren't local all got to stay in a hotel; this in a company that since being taken over by Private Equity is totally fixated on cutting costs. They are also focused on making sure we all know our overpriced underperforming asses are the only things standing in their way of flipping this company, cashing out and moving on. Our executives, most of whom were reasonable people before the takeover, are now fond of using phrases like "Do or Die", "Now or Never" or, my personal favorite, "Push like Hell!". In fact, my Boss' Boss that runs sales globally is being pushed so hard he has stopped making any sense whatsoever. Check out this e-mail I received from him in reply to my announcement of a key design win at my customer:

War congratulations
well Sone
regards,P

Ah, a nice warm congratulations note that also says "I am too fucking important to spell check and have way too many high priority e-mails to really care".

Back to the hotel, I've stayed in a number of flea bag flophouses before and this certainly was not one of the worse ones but nonetheless made this metrosexual's skin crawl. When I was growing up, staying in a hotel was a rare treat. We either stayed in a camper or a tent. That is, if my dad didn't make us just sleep in the car as he drove like a maniac straight through to our destination. The few times we rented a room the establishment was selected on lowest price alone and I shudder to recall the stains on the floors and fecal matter still caked to the toilets.

Ok, let's get back to my room. Sure, it was a "suite" (which I guess meant it was kind of large and contained an empty fridge and coffee maker) with 2 king beds. Two major things bothered me, though, the first type of which were things that were actually not there.

As I laid on my bed reflecting on the day and relaxing towards sleep, I looked up at the wall to admire the artwork and was greeted by the following site:

Ok, so somebody stole the picture. Interesting, I guess there is really no need to replace it, right? The next morning I go to take a shower and hang my clothes on the inside of the door so that the steam will start the de-wrinkling process (Travel Tip!). I closed the door and, viola, somebody must have needed the hooks more than the hotel:


My favorite troublesome item, though, was the "office chair" in this so-called business traveler's suite:


Yeah, I am going to plop my bottom down on that surface. This necessitated me putting a towel down before doing my e-mail in the morning. I usually put a towel down before sitting on any of the furniture in a hotel room, but that is because typically I am not wearing pants.

When presented with the freedom of being alone in a hotel room on the road, I typically frolic freely in the nude. I find it very calming to privately practice my personal penchant. It was almost a compulsion in year's blessedly past where I felt trapped and suffocated in both my personal and professional existence. Now that I have found love and freedom, it is more of a pleasant pastime (and, mind you, not a prurient one).

I'm sitting there trying to check e-mail after firing up the coffee maker and I can't get the connection to work. Undaunted, I open the door to discretely check for the morning paper. Apparently $90 a night does not include enough margin to cover a USA Today or even a crappy local rag. By the way, my room was located at the top of a flight of stairs coming up from the main lobby. It was the most exposed room possible, even having a full view of the glass walled main office. I guess it was a good thing I had my running clothes on (I'm sure the people ascending the stairs at the exact moment I opened my door for the peek would agree).

Into the shower I went, protected by my flip flops (Travel Tip: hotel showers are putrid fungal Petree dishes from which you must shield your feet). When I got out I was assaulted with towels thin enough to be see-through (exaggeration) and more abrasive than my loofah (accurate). Yes, my Love got me into loofahs (I sometime hold them in my hands and ponder wistfully, "Where have you been all my life?") and I now am the proud owner of four of them: one for me and one for my Love hanging in my apartment shower, one in my gym bag, one in my travel bag. Although I elicit some glances at the club walking around in a towel casually swinging my scrubbing sponge, it is worth the mild embarrassment (which I am calloused to, for the most part anyway).

I then went downstairs and decided to have breakfast. This consisted of my grabbing a white Styrofoam cup and plate, filling them with coffee and scrambled eggs (respectively) and heading back up to my room.

I also checked with the front desk about the network. "Weeeer having problems with the eeeenternet, sir" the rotund lady behind the counter assured me. She didn't seem that concerned about it, and she looked at me like, "it's free and you get what you pay for, nerd."

My cup of coffee consumed in the room, I was ready for (TMI alert!) my standard morning elimination routine (stop bitching, I warned you and you kept reading). (One of the side effects of being a runner is that you get very comfortable and in touch with your body and bodily functions. At this point, I actually find it extremely intimate that my Love and I openly and without shame can discuss bathroom stuff or anything else. Ok, we don't sit in front of the fire with a glass of red wine talking bowel movements plumbing the depths of life's mysteries such as "Did we eat corn last night?" It's just that not only are we both runners but also we've exposed every intimate detail about ourselves to each other already. Yes, everything. Yes, even that stuff. Yes, I do highly recommend it.)

Just because something is difficult and unpleasant doesn't mean it can't be wonderful in the end.

Like this business trip I was on (and, yes, I'm as thrilled as you that I found a way back to the main story line) which I will continue in the next installment of this blog (titled "Flight)!