Monthly Archives: February 2014

Booth Babe Confessions

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Booth Babe

Booth Babe

Picture me as a booth babe, because I’ve spent the last week as one. My first confession is that I enjoyed the job. I didn’t ask for it, in fact I lobbied by boss heavily to let someone else do it, someone younger and more adept and also someone female. My sales pitch to my boss was that she knew more about the product than I did, which she did. Her work earned her the spot there in the booth and besides what middle age client would prefer to speak with me over her? If the mantra of the meeting was sales, why not put your best foot forward? I was overruled; my boss wanted an ‘old’ hand on the job. To boot, I had to break the bad news to her.

The main reason that I enjoyed the job was that by being a booth babe I was elevated above my other co-workers. My badge of prestige was a sports coat. Our collective dress code has subsided to the point that even the wearing of a sports coat counts as dressing up. My greatest source of pride stemmed from the complements that Anne gave me, when I first modeled my ‘dress business casual’ attire, as I marched out the door. I first proudly wore the coat and then progressively wore it more uncomfortably. It got hot to wear, especially after the constant to and fro of parading to the shops and back. I’ve been wearing a pedometer this winter to get some hand on what little exercise that I have been doing. On particular high step count days this week, I’ve crowed to Anne that I’d spent the day shopping.

My second confession is that I’m actually quite good at the job, at least in my self deluding context. I’m not the kind of booth babe that is likely to attract anyone using appearance. So, I adopted a sort of a stealth booth babe approach. My approach is sort of like fishing. The display is the bait, the fish are the customers and as the fisherman, your primary attribute should be patience. I know that this approach is contrary to the booth babe model, but sometimes you just have to run with what you got. I just hung back and let the display cast as far as it could. I was aided in the fact that in my display, I had an excellent lure. I just hung back until my prey was in the box and then pounced. I was rough at first, but with thirteen years of computer sales under my belt, I improved quickly, hit my stride and soon was running with a pretty good patter. By the end of the week, even I was buying what I was selling.

Suffice to say that being a real booth babe is a tough job. Even after experiencing my relatively benign sales environment, I don’t envy the real booth babes or their work environments. The Saint Louis Auto Show one portrayed above and her younger replacement waiting in the wings put it on the line every day at every show. I at least have the luxury to move on to something new.

All Systems Are Go

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GoPro Spirit of Saint Louis

GoPro Spirit of Saint Louis

All signs are go, after a much delayed launch count. My crap has been moved, travel is booked and except for an Act of God, I shall descend upon Seattle next week. Unlike my trip last year this one seems to be all business. One of my trusty younger colleagues has rung up a twelve day schedule of twelve-hour days. At least I’ll be richer after the fact, if I survive. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to spend as much time with Jay and Carl under this regimen, but I will make an effort to do a dinner with them and then there is après.

I have been pushing rope for more than a month now and all too often it has been a goat rope. The difference between this trip and last year’s is that last time I was pretty much a JAFO (Just-Another-F-ing-Observer), this time it is my show. I can proudly claim though that I haven’t yet and likely won’t do a lick of work to pull this stunt off, but a lot of other people have, sometimes an unbelievable number of them.

One of my biggest struggles has been moving crap for Point A to Point B. I understand that moving this stuff across the country, especially during this tougher than normal winter can be difficult. I can’t understand why it has been so difficult to move some of this crap across the street. It really wasn’t a logistical issue. It was just a matter of egos.

I spent most of last week ping-ponging back-and-forth between one individual and the next. I eventually got a consensus built and all systems seemed a go, when out of left-field someone threw a flag. Swallowing my frustration, I began retracing my goat rope route, only to be met at the first knot with, “You can tell [so-and-so] to kiss-my-ass!” She then immediately apologized to me for swearing. On my way off to tell so-and-so, I overheard her talking to her assistant about me, “He always takes these things so well.” I felt so totally Dilbert at that moment.

Texas Hooker

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Texas Hooker

Texas Hooker

Hooks usually originate as low pressure systems that form east of the Rocky Mountains. As the upper level flow descends the Rockies’ eastern flank, the air warms by compression, and as it warms the pressure at the surface drops. The result is a phenomenon known as a lee side low. The lows that form in the lee of the towering San Juan range in southern Colorado become Panhandle Hooks or Texas Hookers. The above USGS weather map from 5 PM CT shows a classic hook front, extending from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. It will spawn blizzards and tornadoes all at the same time.

A Five Year Plan

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Big White Gloves, Big Four Wheels by Jim Dine

Big White Gloves, Big Four Wheels by Jim Dine

Yesterday, I went home for lunch, something I don’t usually do, but I had to run an errand. On the way back to work I hit a traffic jam on the highway. Initially, I wasn’t too concerned, because I was less than half-a-mile from my exit, but the traffic was not moving at all. Eventually, an emergency vehicle passed me on the shoulder. Then one and then another and soon a steady stream of yahoos passed me too. I had a meeting to make at work and if I didn’t get moving, I would be late. At the next gap, I got on the shoulder too. I guess that makes me a yahoo. It turned out that the highway had been closed, because Vice-President Biden had come to town.

My place of business is right next to the airport gate where Mr. Biden’s plane landed and his motorcade launched from. If I hadn’t been stuck on the highway, I would have been locked out of work. My meeting had been delayed and since I had missed it, I took my lunchtime walk across the parking lots. A military C-17 was parked on the tarmac not too far from the airport’s firehouse. I figured it was used to haul Joe Junior’s limo. All of the fire equipment was out of the firehouse and on parade. A bunch of cops were hanging out among them and for some reason the county’s bomb squad, with their bomb disposal truck were there too. To complete this circus, a flighy test F-15 was doing donuts in the sky, no less than 500’ overhead.

Biden was in town to dedicate the South Harbor expansion of America’s Central Port. This is a river barge terminal in Granite City, Illinois and is located on the Mississippi. The political point that Biden was making involved the stimulus. $14.5M of stimulus money was used to fund this shovel ready harbor improvement for transporting Midwest grain. More formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $831B ARRA was signed by President Obama in 2009. Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of its signature. Not all of that near trillion dollars was well spent, but fundamentally the stimulus succeeded, it kept our economy afloat, when it was in grave danger of capsizing. This post’s title alludes to Soviet style economic central planning, which was eventually proved a failure. Detractors of the stimulus have already piled upon this line of thought. I can’t disagree more. The stimulus was a life line that kept America from drowning in the second Great Depression.

Big White Gloves, Big Four Wheels, created by Jim Dine, is a sculpture in Saint Louis’s downtown City Garden. Jim Dine has been intrigued by the story of Pinocchio for much of his life. In recent years he has explored the temptations, trials and tribulations of the mischievous wooden boy through a series of drawings, prints and sculptures. Like Geppetto, the puppet’s fictional creator, Dine brings Pinocchio to life. The artist believes “the idea of a talking stick becoming a boy is like a metaphor for art.”