I will have been in Los Angeles for approximately 48 hours when I take off today but it's actually been packed with stuff that makes the road fun. Turned out I wasn't alone in the City of Angles (not a typo) and met up with a couple others from the company, caught a ride to In-N-Out Burger for my fix, caught up with Matty at iO and saw another good show, then back to work.
The work on this trip might stand out as the most excessive under-use of what we do - 900 keypads (so, theoretically 900 people in attendance) and it was a meeting to inject some energy into some of their projects, get people excited and find out what will get people moving. That is totally what our system is great for. If you decide to use it.
I should have worried when we weren't sent any content until the night before I left Mpls but last minute work is nothing new - but I found out when I arrived on site (after arriving before sunrise and pushing 900lbs of gear up a hill) that all of our participation in the meeting had been cut. ALL of it.
My work was now to run the pre-show texting fun, basically the same stuff you see before concerts where people text in their friends' name and something banal as an excuse to see their name appear on the screen in lights and get that weird rush of dopamine that apparently comes with it. That was what I did, for a bunch of financial folks, so things like "Audit RULES!" were not uncommon.
That wasn't a joke. There was an on-screen battle going on between Audit and Tax. Lamest street-gangs ever.
After that, the meeting started, which is where the fun usually begins but in this case that was where it ended. The client looked at me with a big smile and thanked me for my good work, which is nice and I'm glad they were happy with it - I was just stuck sitting there doing absolutely nothing for the entirety of the day since all my keypads were on the floor with the attendees. Oh well, there are harder jobs and if they want to pay me to sit around then I can sit around like a professional.
After packing up 900 keypads (normally a several person job) in record time and lugging them manually down the elevator and out to the sidewalk and onto a truck - I was finished, in every sense of the word. Back to the hotel, rest and contemplated turning in and instead opened up Yelp! and found out I was a few blocks (ok, more like a mile) from Little Tokyo and a highly recommended sushi hole-in-the-wall.
On the way out a cabbie actually tried blocking me with his car, going backwards and forwards to block me, to try and stop me from walking to where I was going - because nothing says customer service like almost running someone over.
Sushi was GREAT. Fantastic little place I never would have found on my own and I watched them carve a massive slab of Toro tuna that was fit only for Kitchen Stadium and then serve it - for $5 a pop. Normally Toro is, what? $20? So I got fed, and fed well. And when the bill came I was stunned to see how cheap it was. This is now officially the opposite of most of my work travel dining experiences.
Hiked uphill back to the hotel and crashed for a long night of sleep, which does not suit me at all, according to my spine. Turns out I am more designed for sleeping very little and in airplanes. Good thing, since that's where I'm headed now.
So long, LA.
I'm looking forward to dinner with the family and breakfast in the arena.
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