Artificial Cheese

Time to start another thread on this blog, Adventures in Consulting.  I’ll be writing about my new career as a consultant and the events involved.

Just to preface this entire thing, you need to know a little bit about me.  I’m more or less a 14 year old kid that is just falling into grown up situations.  All of my aspirations involve playing video games and drinking chocolate milk made by my mother.  My mom used to feed me breakfast while I played River City Ransom on my Nintendo as a child, and the rest of my life thus far happened just as effortlessly.  High school just happened, college just happened, and my first employment just happened.

Excuse me while I knock on the wooden desk in my hotel room.

So when a former mentor-like co-worker called me up and told me that a job opening was available for my taking, that just happened too.  Before I knew it, I was on my way to Austin for an interview, and shortly thereafter, my first day of employment.

My story starts at the Philadelphia Airport.  I picked up a 2007 NFL Draft magazine to keep me company and sat down to read it.  Right then, an attractive young female sits in the open seat right next to me…so I cross my leg away from her to keep reading.  Soon enough she leaves and a young Indian man approaches her former seat.

He asks, “Excuse me sir, is this seat taken?”

I like to analyze people, especially confused Indian people.  First, you know that he won’t be acting has himself after calling a crazy haired 24-year old with bright green pants, ”sir”.  Secondly, the seat was obviously not taken, but he still asked me and not the person on the other side of the empty seat, so he obviously wanted to talk. As he sits down he says, “You know, you look like an older version of Harry Potter!”  …Masterful; its Chapter 1 in the book of conversations, under ‘Ice Breakers’.  It felt like a job interview.

I suddenly realized that I had not been replying to anything he said.  Just a cold, analytical stare.  Fortunately I was still within reply-range from the last thing he said.  We got to talking and it turns out that he is an American Airlines employee, and he can’t get on the flight because he missed his last one.  He caught sight of my classy NFL Draft guide and realized that we had nothing in common.  The conversation ended with, “Sorry about the flight” as I boarded the plane.

I was placed between two men on the plane.  The man in the window seat was a professor or editor of some sort, and the man on the aisle was a businessman with a thick New England accent.  Both had laptops.  This was very painful because a slight turn of the head could set off their peripheral alarms and they’ll think that I am staring at their screens.  So I stared at the floatation device label for about 10 minutes and went to sleep.

I woke up to the thunderous boom of a New England voice screaming, “Don’t bust my balls!” into a cell phone.  I’ve never gone from sleep to muffled laughter so quickly.  He didn’t hear me, otherwise my balls would be busted accordingly.  One flight complete, but one transfer to go. 

I love to watch people board the plane with a grand sense of purpose, you can almost see their intent as they think about marching onto the plane, sitting down, and reading their newspaper.  All that energy bursts when they get into the tunnel to the plane to be stopped in line.  The kid that I was stuck behind was carrying a great big drum.  Thats right, a huge drum.  He enters the plane and starts bargaining with the flight attendant to get his drum placed with the crew’s luggage.

There wasn’t much that the crew could do, because they couldn’t rightly place it underneath with the check-in luggage just so Smashy the Baggage Handler could pulverize it.  So they spent about two minutes trying to squeeze it into the tiny closet next to the boarding door, all the while people are urging me to force my way past them so they can fulfill their newspaper dreams.

Eventually the drum gets stuffed and the line starts moving.  I make my way to the seat, and this time there is a small lady from Texas sitting next to me.  Great, I can finally enjoy my flight with some peace and quiet.  Just then I found out who my window seat buddy was going to be: the drummer.

“Excuse me, thats my seat” he said.  The Texas lady got right up and moved, and that prompted the drummer to make his way for the seat before I could get out of the way.  So in my opinion, my only option was to grab two arm rests and hoist myself into the air as he passed by.  Now that’s an ice breaker.  I surprised myself and everyone around me with my nimbleness.

The flight was a brisk 30 minutes between Dallas and Austin.  It was time to go pick up my first ever rental car.  I walked up to the counter and the man behind the counter reverts to a machine state.

“Hello-my-name-is-Something-welcome-to-Hertz-can-I-have-your-last-Name-please?”  I spelled it out.  “Thank-you-please-pick-you-fuel-options-from-the-ones-that-we-offer-here-are-our-plans-please-review-them-and-agree-to-these-plans-and-read-these-rules-don’t-take-the-car-to-Mexico…”

“…would-you-like-to-purchase-insurance-plan-one-offers-gold-star-protection-against-theftincidentcrashprotection-silver-plan-offers-tire-insurance-with-additional-charge-unless-you-are-a-gold-member”

I was in hell.  I just agreed and disagreed randomly and let my company pick up the tab.  “Here-is-your-contract-you-car-is-at-E103-have-a-nice-day” …then he finally powered down.  Good god that was a nightmare.  I just climbed the stairs to the parking garage and looked for my car.

I looked down at my contract to find the car.  My car was parked in a spot, hand written to be E-pitchfork-theta-3.  This wasn’t bad handwriting, but it certainly wasn’t english.  I backtracked the entire way to the desk to ask what this guy wrote, but the machine had vanished.  Instead, there was a larger Texas woman.

I gave her the contract and asked her to decipher the mess.  She looked at me like I was illiterate and told me without hesitation exactly where I was parked.  I found the car and made my way around the parking maze to the exit.  I stopped and opened the window, just like the sign said, and an elderly man approached me.

I spurted out, “Hi!”  He responded with minimal enthusiasm.  Now this was my first time renting a car, but this obviously wasn’t the guy’s first time stopping a rental before it left the lot.  We stared at each other waiting for something to happen.  About 5 full seconds later he says, “I need to see your contract.”  I felt a bit like an immigrant at a drive thru.  He took it, reviewed it, and I managed to handle his requests from that point on.

I called the hotel for directions from the airport and I was on my way.  The drive alone was an adventure, read my previous blog entry about Austin to find out why.

As soon as I got to the hotel, my first stop was the bathroom.  I think this visit will become a ritual, as the bathroom makes or breaks a good hotel room.  As I was handing my business, I could make out a strange rattling from where my front door would be.  I ignored it and finished up.  Two minutes later the rattling was still there, so I got out and looked through the peep hole.  A large older Texas woman had been trying to enter my room with her keycard for the past few minutes.

She had been out there for a while, and I wanted to alert her to my presence as painlessly as possible.  So I moved very slowly, which hindsight has proved to be the wrong decision.  As I creaked open the door, I heard a loud gasp.  I peeked outside and caught a flash of the woman running for her life as she screamed and shouted apologies back to me.  As she rounded the corner she proceeded to scream, “I told you so! I told you so!”  At least the entertainment was free.

I woke up next morning with gusto.  The shower pressure was hard, just as I like it.  It washed the airplane stench off of me.  As I got out of the shower, I could hear a knocking at the door interlaced with a high squeaky voice.  It was housekeeping, and I couldn’t shout through two doors.  So I quickly wrapped a towel around my waist and threw open the door.

There stood an elderly hispanic woman staring at me with panic and fear.  Now ladies, I’m not much to look at.  Sort of lanky and pasty in inappropriate places.  But I have a car and my company gives me stock options, so she was getting an eyeful.  When all was said and done, the total number of women that I had sent screaming from my hotel room since landing in Austin instantly doubled.

It was an interesting start to an unusual week.  I was greeted every morning with a cleaning maid that was grinning ear to ear outside of my door.  Hopefully I’ll have as much to write about in the following weeks, I’m just getting started.