4 weeks ago:
- I went to Boston for a two-day, off-site sales meeting at which laptops, BlackBerries, iPhones, and general whispering were prohibited. Naturally, The Officemate and coworker Shannon and I were all sitting in the back row with open laptops and iPhones and whispered comments about everything, but mostly just making fun of everyone we work with and how super lame they are – including The Big Boss, AKA Miranda Priestly, who was wearing acid-washed jeans and, as Coworker Shannon pointed out, deserved to be mocked.
- The first night of the Sales meeting involved a team-bonding activity in which they bussed us to some appliance store, which not only sells ovens and refrigerators, but also puts on team cooking nights. I and the others were highly suspicious (you’re making me cook my goddamn dinner?), but they greeted us with aprons and an assortment of wine and appetizers, so I was slightly mollified. Then they divided us into half, and sent one half into a classroom where some old man lectured them about wine. The rest of us were then further divided into teams and assigned cooking stations, a chef, and recipes. The Officemate and I wound up on the same team, where we were instructed on how to quarter chickens. I was probably the best at it on my team, but then again, I’m a domestic little faggot and I’ve certainly carved a chicken or two in my time. (That sounds like a euphemism, doesn’t it?) But I wasn’t as good as Chef Steve, who could quarter a chicken in 35 seconds—we timed him.
- After my team finished, we moved into the wine education/tasting classroom, where there weren’t enough seats, so Coworker Shannon and Coworker None and I sat on a counter in the back. We were also three sheets to the wind at this point, so we sneaked in three bottles of wine so we could continue to drink. Yes, we felt the need to have a ready supply of wine AT THE WINE TASTING. And it’s a good thing we did, too, because the bitch doling out the wine sample fucking hated us for talking all through the session, so she skipped us every single fucking time. Can you believe that shit? And the old man teaching the class had no sense of humor and was as dry as a Mormon township, so he was no fun. One of the Executive Vice Presidents fell asleep, which was really funny, and since I was drunk, I of course felt the need to point this out to everyone. Eventually I grew tired of it all, faked a coughing attack, and fled out the back door. My smarter coworkers eventually followed suit.
- Then we skipped the dinner we had cooked in favor of more drinking.
- And went outside and took pictures of ourselves sitting on someone’s parked motorcycle.
- Followed by stealing bottles of wine from the store to bring with us on the bus ride back to the hotel.
- Where we invaded the hotel bar and two coworkers got into a fight that ended with one of them (a guy) in tears in the ladies’ room. Don’t ask.
- And then later that night, I totally had sexytimes with Coworker None.
3 weeks ago:
- I was in Orlando for a conference/tradeshow at the Hilton in the Walt Disney World Resort. Coworker Shannon and I met up at the airport, where she rented a truly awful Dodge Avenger that somehow managed, in two days, to need an oil change and have a flat tire. But the best part was that Shannon paid for a FastLane-type device to pay the tolls on the highways. Unfortunately, the car wasn’t equipped with that device, as we discovered when we zipped through the first toll and were met with a disapproving red light instead of a happy green one. However, since she had paid for the thing, she felt perfectly justified in going through the FastLanes anyway, so we took great delight in posing for the video cameras snapping pictures of us at each toll as we sped through illegally.
- The tradeshow itself was uneventful, but oh god, did we have fun at night. Some clients of ours were in attendance, so the sales people felt obliged to invite them to dinner with us at some fancy Italian place at the Swan. One of the guys on our team is very nice, but he’s the kind of guy that sometimes asks to be made of. Fortunately for us, he’s also the kind of person who, when you make fun of him to his face, actually lights up and LOVES IT. So when we assembled at the bar of this restaurant for cocktails and I threw down my AMEX, I began taking drink orders. Everyone ordered except for this guy, who begged off by saying (as he had the previous night) that he had promised his wife that he wouldn’t drink while he was away.
Now, if there’s one cardinal rule in Drew’s Guide to Life, it’s this: Thou does not refuse free drinks, particularly those on the company’s dime. So Shannon and I browbeat him a little bit, and he finally gave in. The order went something like this:
Drew: “What do you want to drink?”
Coworker J: “A vodka cran.”
Client A: “Gin martini, up, with a twist.”
Shannon: “Vodka martini, extra dirty.”
That Guy: “A martini, I guess.”
Drew: “Oh, thank god. What kind, vodka or gin?”
That Guy: “Sour apple.”
Drew: “Oh, for fuck’s sake…”
That Guy: “That’s what I want!”
-
The real fun happened after dinner, when we headed to Pleasure Island, specifically 8Traxx, where Shannon and I discovered some troll woman wearing a neon security vest. We became obsessed with her and began stalking her around the club, chasing her up stairs while I snapped pictures with my iPhone. Finally we cornered her and she agreed to pose for pictures with us, and then she won our hearts by agreeing to let Shannon wear the Safety Patrol vest for a picture.After that, we grew bored of the losers around us and departed for Mannequins, where the revolving stage quickly made us ill. By this point, it was down to Shannon, me, That Guy, and Client A, who was having a blast and was in it for the long haul. Shannon, to me: “I want jams. Let’s ditch them and go find jams.”
So we did, and found our way to the BET, where we were the only ones there aside from the bartender. That Guy texted me to find out where we were, so I broke down and told them (see, I’m not an entirely bad person), and they joined us. The club started to fill up by then, and we were having a great time dancing and doing shots. A while later, That Guy walked over to Shannon and me and said, “Okay, come on, let’s go.”
Outraged, we demanded, “What do you mean? We’re not ready to go!”
He sighed. “It’s 2am, you assholes, they just announced that the place is closed. Let’s go.”
But Shannon had spotted something that, in her drunkenness, looked to be the Holy Grail: an old-fashioned phone.“I want that phone,” she said to me. “Let’s steal it.”
She ran over, grabbed it, and shoved the whole thing up her shirt. The receiver promptly fell out of her shirt, crashing to the floor and giving the impression that she had just given birth to a beige baby.
“I got it!” I yelled, and without hesitation, jammed the receiver down my pants.
“Now let’s just face each other,” she said, “And we’ll walk out of here and no one will notice.”
We shimmied over to the stairs, and we were about to take the first step, when some female security guard approached us.
“Excuse me,” she barked, “but what do you think you’re doing with that phone?”
We dissolved into laughter and surrendered the phone, but Shannon was a little more gracious about it than I was, since I reached into my pants and handed the phone to the woman by saying, “That was just against my penis. It’s probably still warm.”
And ran out of the club.
We then apparently posed for pictures with perfect strangers (neither of us remembered that until the following morning, when we checked the camera) and took angsty, emo-pictures of ourselves before climbing into the Avenger's backseat so That Guy could drive us back to his hotel.Only problem: Shannon, Client A and I were all staying at a different hotel.
Resolution? Client A drove us back to our hotel in the Avenger while Shannon and I cuddled in the backseat and took pictures of ourselves.
When we got to the hotel, we somehow came up with the brilliant idea to have Client A take pictures of us both on top of, and behind, the deserted hotel bar – at 2:30 in the morning.
It was all going fine until some lumpy DoubleTree employee in a hideous jean skirt came clomping over and yelled, “Why are you opening the cabinets in the bar?”I was so insulted that I gave her my best disgusted bitchface and said, really condescendingly, “We’re not opening ANYTHING. We’re just taking stupid pictures, and don’t worry, we’re going to bed now.”
And with that, we sprinted for the elevator.
Two weeks ago will come soon…
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