"HOLY SHIT! THE ROOM IS SPINNING!"

Yep, I am in Kentucky, waiting for my plane to arrive. I just spent the last few days at a Society for Rangeland Management conference pushing our companies services on anyone who would listen. During the day at least. Last night we had a "business" dinner with the sales reps from "Large Chemical Manufacturer X" with much of the "business" being how many drinks and how much heckling can you handle. Over dinner I watched how large corporate reps woo their customers and got stories of how they used to woo their customers. I heard tales of contracts being closed with gifts of hookers and new cars, and other much shadier promotions (this is no more however!). Throughout this meeting I was mostly quiet, retorting to their constant heckling with the occasional jab back, and I just watched and listened. With this job, there are two very different sides I am finding. One is an average, out-of-college job with menial work that is sometimes stimulating and fun. The other is a side of work I didnt expect to see for a very long time; its the large corporate good-ole-boys type of work where you dont really do anything except bullshit for an hour and then with 5 minutes left you say "ok, so we are good on the agreement to sell "product X" exclusively?" and the drunken ass who just drank $150 of the corporate wine says "Suuuure!" ...And another $400,00 deal is born, based on a few drinks and a pair of box seats at a Nascar event. I tell ya, not being a fan of Nascar, I am going to be a hard sell for these corporate reps, whenever I reach that level.
My favorite moment from possibly the whole time I have been at this job happened last night. After a few drinks at the bar, we were seated for dinner at a table in a room that was very slowly rotating on the 27th floor of the hotel(think space needle adjacent to a skyscraper). We all noticed the room was moving after several minutes as the windows and walls slowly changed orientation. Meanwhile Barry, who has the highest yearly sales(in millions) in the company every year (and is one of the good ole boys), is drinking merrily away. About an hour and a half into dinner(the room has done at least 1.5 rotations by now) Barry smacks the table and says, "I KNEW IT! The room IS spinning!" Everyone stared at him for 2 or 3 seconds in silence, and then there was laughter for the next 10 minutes of so. Secretly I had the same thought about 10 minutes into dinner when I realized the room was rotation, but I'll be damned if I was going to be the first to point out the room was spinning. It is good to know that I now have ammo on some of my superiors. I'll keep that on in my back pocket.

Now I am going to fly back to OR and enjoi the 400+ inches at Meadows. Schwing!