Where we all pray for dollars and work for change

Monday blog - many things to recap

Work was madness - pulled an all-nighter in preparation for both shows to finish off the week, arrived at the MOA at 5am in a suit and tie and loaded my gear into the meeting room, which was in the middle of the amusement park.
It's creepy enough when you're all alone before the sun comes up but even more jarring when you work a ten hour meeting in a dark, windowless room surrounded by stuffy doctors talking about weighty issues - just long enough to forget where you are - and then step out into a busy amusement park full of kids and blazing sunshine.

Packed up, saw the kids for a few minutes, grabbed more equipment from the office and hit the highway to Duluth. At this point I had not slept in way too long and not even stopped to eat.

Arrived in Duluth in good time but apparently not quick enough since all the kitchens in town were closed. I had blown by all the fast food on the highway planning on grabbing a good meal as reward for a lot of hard work and hustle only be told by the people at Hell's Kitchen that booze was pretty much my only option.
My hotel didn't even have a place to eat other than a vending machine so I was now moving on a long time with no sleep and only a candy bar. Ah, glamorous work travel.

Woke up late the next morning. Much later than I wanted.
Met the client, setup the entire room since the hotel AV crew was beyond inept and hadn't even started yet. Luckily the guy in our office that ran this show last time had warned me and I brought enough equipment to put together an entire meeting without help from the twits they had on staff.
All that means is that I ended up running my ass off right up until the meeting started without so much as a cup of coffee. I was tense to say the least.
When we hit our first scheduled break all the presenters swooped on the tech table to drop off their materials, which I had "final" versions of from the client so they of course decided to screw with right up until the moment they went onstage - including one guy that literally handed me a flash drive and walked to the podium, tapped on the mic and said "Alright, let's get started" and then stared at me (seated at the front of the room instead of the back, which is more customary) and then followed with "Where are my slides??" into the mic.

Literally - 10-20 seconds had elapsed since he handed me his drive, apparently he thought the projector cable was coming out of my ass and just putting it in my hand would get them on screen. At this point I had slept very very little in 4 days, hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours and, more importantly, no coffee. Tense.

The upside was that, when we finally broke for lunch and I got both food and coffee, the client knew that the hitches in the show were coming from them and not me and said she appreciated how I handled it. Sometimes that's what our job is - handling the unreasonable and ridiculous, doing it on the fly and making it look good. But the more you do that the more they know they can throw the ridiculous and unreasonable at you and you'll make up for a good deal unpreparedness and you will make them look good.

Someday one of us will have to snap to let them know it's too much and I really hope it's me. I've got some rage saved up just for that day.

The meeting ended on time and I loaded back up, checked out of my room and got right back on the highway. My hotel was right on the shore of Lake Superior but I'm not one to hang out when I can get home and sleep in my own bed. Load in, do show, load out, travel, repeat.

Got home in time to watch some Mad Men with the wife and fall asleep at home before waking up very, very early to take Aidan out to Festival for the weekend.

I hate mixing work stress with playtime fun and really this is all just context for why the fun of the weekend is so important - so I think the weekend gets its own post.
Later.