The Wonders of Work

Typically our trip to NECC is exhausting. Maybe it's because the last time I worked it, I was coming straight from spending a week in Astoria at another event, and had already done another back-to-back trip the month before. Maybe it's because I was assigned as a "runner" for the sales office, which is physically demanding and requires a particular attitude that is uncomfortable for me to take on. Regardless, I was expecting this trip to be bad, and it didn't manifest itself into that.

I give a lot of credit to the pleasant atmosphere to some of the coworkers who were new to the event, especially Cameron, our student turned programmer who I spend a majority of my day instant messaging. We took about 18 staff to the event. But another nice part was that three of our coworkers were still there from another event so we got to have dinner with them at least one night, which felt fun and party-like to me since I don't get to see anyone in the office. And then, while most people want to go their own way after we're done with our 12-hr days (hey, we do start at 5:45am almost every morning for seven straight days, interacting with people all day, standing, walking, problem solving...), this year people wanted to go to dinner together. I ended up in some sort of dinner coordinating role with my coworker Katherine, trying to find places to accommodate parties of 10-12. I loved every exhausting minute of it.

And I also got to meet my new clients from NCTE who are intelligent and quick and friendly people. In fact, they were telling us about their annual conference, which Paul said we'd have "representation" at, to give them support, to see what they do (since we're not involved in their conference, yet it is our primary business). And the conference is over my birthday in Philly so I'm on a mission to talk Paul into letting me be the "representation," or me and Elizabeth :-)

My boss/coworker Elizabeth I love. She's 10 years older but we have similarities in our interests and in our intellectual understanding of our systems, and our differences compliment each other for the most part. One of my favorite moments has been after a long hard spring, when we were both doing back-to-back trips and found ourselves with new clients in Orlando, pretending in our own minds that we were on a little vacation, we spent several nights in our hotel's sushi bar splitting some of the best sushi I've had (outside of Maui) and a bottle or so of wine. What could be better? Or, the month following, our evening at a dive bar in Astoria that apparently was a karaoke bar! And she had her birthday on the last night of our event this year so we all got to go out and celebrate.

So what do we actually do at our events? We run registration, the exhibit hall, sign creation and placement and correction, program creation, packet prep (bag stuffing), hiring and training the temps to staff it, sales for the upcoming year's exhibit hall, coordinate security, and this year... distribute 6000 personalized flash drives (to those who registered by May 1) and 4000 generic flash drives (to those registered after), which was my new responsibility. And let me tell you how crazy people get about their free stuff. The morning we opened this area in the exhibit hall, only one of the 14 temps I'd asked for showed up, we had to scramble to recruit volunteers and call OfficeTeam to hire more temps, and we had a line snaking its way through the exhibit hall that was about a 45min wait... for hours. It was crazy. Thankfully I was only briefly a runner. Basically there are sales meetings that companies are given to allow them to pre-select booth space on the upcoming year's floorplan, but many companies miss their time slot. So the runner goes to the booth and reminds the exhibitor of the sales time. But it's an art really, it takes nuance. First you have to find the booth, which is harder than it sounds because booth numbers can be hidden or the company may have signs/posters with their product name, not company name, all over. Then you have to find the particular contact person in our records so you have to try to read the sales people's name tags. Then you can't disturb them while they are talking with an actual attendee, since that's the entire reason they are there. Then... you're not trying to sell them on their sales meeting, since really it's a courtesy to them, but that's what it feels like to me. And they can be so sales-y. Even though I have a "Conference Staff" ribbon on my badge and a radio and a clipboard, they act like I'm interested in their product. Or worse, they get snarky and tell me that they won't be pre-selecting in a snooty tone. Like I give a shit. Anyhow, it's just awkward approaching them, dealing with their attitudes. I will never do sales. Never. Oh, but I also got to count the banks each day, which was sort of fun.

And we got to see one of my favorite clients, Lee, who we had an entertaining dinner with in the restaurant at the International Spy Museum!

The funniest aspect of our group dinners was that Paul and Caitlin apparently have a reputation of sharing food. Paul is a huge food-y. He's an excellent cook and really appreciates good food. So he and Caitlin trades plates often and one of the gals who works for the companies we contract with thinks it's odd. But it caught on! By the last night, we were all ordering food and barely seeing the particular dish we ordered because it was just passed around the table. It felt like a huge family. Plus we got to sample tons of different dishes.

Anyhow, I got to spend time with all these amazingly bright and hard working and fun people. I love my coworkers! While we hardly saw any of DC during our event, it was great and... okay I wouldn't want to repeat it anytime soon but... it was really special.