In the past, typically here at Damaged, Inc. we talk about things like sports, gambling, booze, politics, pop culture and women. Tonight, let's take a sharp left turn and talk about synergy.
Today I embarked upon my second-ever business trip, and I thought we could synergize together about how that went. If that doesn't work, of course, you can ping me or we could circle back on this next week.
After all this is just a brain dump, and all I'm really trying to do is increase your mindshare on how business trips actually work.
Without further ado and without me using any proper nouns at all in this blog post (N.B.: I'm assuming, although I've never been told explicitly, that there are non-disclosure agreements at stake), let's get started...
Monday, December 14, 12:50 PM, North Brunswick, NJ: I double-check my overnight bag, triple-check my laptop case, load up the trunk and leave. I am extremely paranoid and OCD about leaving things behind, and despite (because of?) this, I leave something important behind 50% of the time I travel.
This time, my belongings consist of a change of clothes (business casual), travel-sized toiletries, swim trunks (since the hotel I'm staying at tonight has a hot tub), my cell phone charger, GPS, iPod,... and almost a thousand dollars cash.
I should probably explain the last item.
You see, on this business trip I'm driving around the mid-Atlantic, interviewing business owners (all I can say) for a work client (all I can say). I'm being accompanied by a videographer, and the end result will be a film that will be shown to pretty high-ranking executives at the client company.
The thing is, we need to compensate the business owners for their time. And these business owners are being compensated, in cash, ridiculously well. My advice to those of you out there who are currently not participants in one or more market research panels -- become a participant in one or more market research panels. Find some online. Schlesinger Associates is a great place to start. You will make serious bank, I promise.
Anyway, this trip is supposed to be a lot of fun, and I assume it will be - my job normally consists of a lot of data crunching and report generation, which I really like, but desk stuff doesn't beat a bona fide road trip filming a real-life version of "The Office". Combined with better-than-average December weather, a couple of days on the open road is an unexpected treat.
1:05 PM, North Brunswick, NJ: I'm still uncomfortable paying for things with my corporate card. I feel like I'm cheating or committing insurance fraud or something -- the money I'm using to pay for this full tank of gas doesn't really exist.
Perhaps as a psychological manifestation of this, I fill my tank with cut-rate Raceway fuel. I never do this with my cars, but the gas station is there and I'm scared to death of being late for my first interview, which is at 2 PM.
1:50 PM, Hamilton, NJ: There is good news and there is bad news.
The good news is that there was no traffic on U.S. 1, and I arrived at the location of the first interview ten minutes early. The bad news is that, instead of being at the actual interview site, I'm currently using the women's facilities at a nearby, somewhat seedy Italian restaurant.
It goes without saying to the majority of my readership that I am a little high-strung (at times) and get a little nervous (at times). When I get nervous, I am sometimes overwhelmed by simultaneous dehydration and the need to... you know, pee. Because this unique feeling just hit me, I decided to find a nearby restaurant, where I bought and simultaneously chugged a Diet Snapple.
This became a very bad idea when I was told that the men's bathroom was out of order. Graciously, I was allowed to use the women's facilities while the owner of the restaurant literally guarded the door.
Women's bathrooms are a little weird, for reasons that are probably obvious to women and also not worth mentioning here. I'm just glad that things worked out OK. This could've been a disaster.
3:45 PM, somewhere near Lawnside, NJ: I catch 3 Journey songs in a row on a Philadelphia rock radio station. This immediately reminds me that Journey is awesome road trip music, so I fire up my iPod only to find... the iPod click of death.
My iPod isn't working, which kinda sucks. I was counting on a couple new playlists to get me through northeastern Maryland later tonight. Humming "Only the Young," I surf the FM dial and decide that it's almost time to purchase satellite radio.
5:00 PM, Woodbury Heights, NJ: I'm starting to come into my own as a documentary maker. The second interview of the day went much better than the first, due to lack of nerves on my part and better... synergy between myself, the videographer, and the interviewee.
I'm supposed to remain silent while the film is running - my role is to prompt the responses, but I'm not the actual story here - but at times I do things like provide a "thumbs-up" when the response is good or a "cut it" motion when a loud compressor or something goes off in the business.
At times, I even pull off the "thoughtful, hand on the chin" Mike Wallace pose successfully. If this whole marketing research thing doesn't work out, 60 Minutes, here I come. I'm only kidding.
5:20 PM, Wendy's, Woodbury, NJ: I hope I'm not alone when I say that eating junk food is the best part of a road trip (and the best part of a business trip). I almost never eat by myself these days - I usually have my girlfriend, at bare minimum, as a dining partner - so I pull into a Wendy's for a solitary meal. I find that this particular Wendy's is populated by (a) myself; (b) the Wendy's staff; and (c) a cluster of six mouth-breathing octogenarians wearing NASCAR caps and taking approximately 12 minutes to order.
I miss how, back in the 1980's, the tables inside Wendy's restaurants were linoleum with old-timey newspaper clippings underneath. This made nerdy five-year-old me love Wendy's restaurants. An undeniably classy move, and I have no clue why they decided to get rid of the old-timey newspaper clippings. I want my horse and carriage, dammit!
6:00 PM, near Carney's Point, NJ. A lot of people like to make fun of New Jersey. Those who do so forget how diverse the state is. For instance, I'm currently driving through a part of the state that is memorable only for two things:
(1) Close proximity to the Delaware Memorial Bridge;
(2) Closer proximity to a nuclear power plant, this fact of which I know only because I just drove past a road sign helpfully reminding me that I have entered an "Instant Death Zone."
I am extremely happy to be inside the Carney Point Instant Death Zone, and - in fact - if this particular nuclear power plant is going to erupt at any point in the next 80 years, I kind of hope it erupts right now. Obviously I don't have a death wish or anything, but I can't imagine any way of dying that's worse than through radiation poisoning. I'd rather just get it over with.
6:10 PM, somewhere between New Jersey and Delaware. My dad is scared to death of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, for reasons I've never been able to understand. These days the span is wide and on this particular day, there is no wind, so I have a pretty non-moment
ous tripacross the bridge into the First State.
6:17 PM, Delaware.
6:50 PM, Bodymore, Murdaland. HBO's "The Wire" has done lots of important things. As an element of popular culture, it transformed the way many people think about crime, poverty, education, mass media, politics, and the complex interactions between each aspect of American life. As allegory, it was powerful. As drama, it was captivating and award-winning. In 2008, the United States elected a President who not only loved the show but considered certain dramatic themes contained therein as logical alternatives to the status quo in dealing with certain domestic problems (e.g., the "War on Drugs", etc.).
At the precise moment, I'm driving through a tunnel, humming Tom Waits' "Down in the Hole" to myself and trying to figure out if I'll ever drive/fly/hover through Baltimore, MD for the rest of my life without thinking of "The Wire." Holy crap, I have relatives I miss less than I miss that show.
Since driving through inner cities is always a little harrowing, and since the undercurrent (if there is one) of this blog post involves dealing with nervousness, I thought I should regale you with the interesting tales of My First Ever Road Trip (2005) and My First Ever Business Trip (2006)... here goes...
My First Ever Road Trip (2005)
- My 2001 Santa Fe was almost fired upon in a drug-infested ghetto in Wilmington, DE. Lost while trying to find our hotel, and in the days before I owned a GPS, my dad and I were driving from Philadelphia to Jacksonville, Florida. I called a friend who lived in a nearby section of Delaware, but because my cell phone service was spotty I misheard him telling me "not to drive down Madison Avenue" without the crucial not to aspect. This was the one and only time I ran through stop signs to get out of a neighborhood. We were scared to death.
- Watched people smoke marijuana casually inside a McDonald's in North Carolina.
- Discussed drug use and sex with my father in a way I hope I never have to again.
- Found out I was allergic to eating MSG through a terrifying P.F. Chang's experience.
- Learned that 22-year-olds have no place in the back room of a focus group facility.
- Had a panic attack in the back row, middle seat, of a small US Airways flight from Charlotte, NC to Newark, NJ because a lot of things went wrong:
- The flight was delayed and stuck on the tarmac due to poor weather in Newark;
- I was crammed between two large gentlemen in a very cramped seat with very little available oxygen;
- The smells from the bathroom behind me were nauseating;
- I was thirsty, blood-shot and exhausted from the preceding business trip, combined with MSG sickness;
- At the time, I hated -- HATED -- flying in general.
- Thankfully, a US Airways flight attendant recognized the symptoms - after I calmed down, she told me that her daughter suffered from panic attacks - and moved me into first class, where I sipped warm ginger ale and remained for the entire flight.
- Realized that I wasn't quite ready for a businessman's career just yet.
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Some of the people who read this blog are people I met in graduate school. Graduate students are often indoctrinated with stories of how working in industry is horrible. As a result, I am convinced that many academics feel that 95% of working Americans are constrained to their mortgages, miserable, head-over-heels in debt, treated as expendable at work, and nearly-dehumanized by society as a whole.
There are probably some specific instances where these criteria are satisfied. But I'm not even close to being that miserable, and neither are the people I work with. I'm occasionally around some people who hate their jobs, but that's because their jobs kind of suck.
Systems don't have to malfunction, and any system can be managed by a person or people who are talented enough to manage it successfully. Contrary to some opinions, industry is not always horribly inefficient, dehumanizing, and stupid. There are instances where everything works out fine, and everyone is happy.
Speaking of happiness. My point, consistent with many of the things I've written since leaving Boston back in May, is that happiness isn't something that passively happens to a person due to circumstance. It's something that's created actively. It's the easiest way to explain why most of us are walking around miserable, and it also explains why some people are actually able to figure out how to make shit work.
I'm happy to be on this business trip.
