I had the great pleasure of being staffed in a warm locale and enjoyed spending many a weekend alternative traveling to virtual paradises. On occasion, fellow colleagues and I would spend our weekends jaunting to places I had never been. On one such weekend, we flew to an island utopia, two of us regulars - only this time to be joined by a member of my firm’s consulting fraternity whom I had never had the delight of meeting.
As a direct address to the ‘Annoying Guy’, here is a laundry list of reasons why I will never spend any more time than a requisite 5 minutes humoring you with mindless banter. I hope you fucking read this…
- Upon landing at the island locale, you spent exactly 2 straight hours bitching about your flight and how your lack of status on the airline led to problems with your travel. Additionally, you spoke about how you wanted to ‘circumvent’ flying home on said airline by concocting crazy travel and point stories, using ‘traveler’s rights’ and other blah blah (I’d stopped paying attention at this point)… Uh… who are you trying to impress? Last time I checked all of us are consultants, and, consequently all point whores who all champion the airlines and hotels of our choice. Simply put - so you had a bad flight. Why should you bother me with your shit… Suck it up, you’re in paradise. Oh… btw - I had a very pleasant flight!
- You do realize that we’d never met prior to this trip and while I do understand the financial benefits of stuffing us into one room, frankly, I would’ve reconsidered had I understood you’re typical hotel room attire. I don’t need to see you parading around in your ever-too-short boxers. I don’t know you from Adam, Sanjay, Chen-yoo or any other consultant… buy some pajamas or shorts…. this is what your incidental $$ should be used for.
- If I tell you something that does not mesh with your beliefs or ideals, don’t belittle me… and certainly, there is no reason for you to judge me… I mean, look, I’m not judging you… I don’t need to hear stories of your dates and (lack of) escapades… what signals had I given that I seemed open to ‘locker room’ talk?… oh yeah… and I last I checked, you weren’t really a looker yourself. My Dear Abby moment - date any girl that will date you.
- I don’t think I’m the only one who finds it a tad obscure that you would drive like a maniac (to the point where I was going to vomit my turkey sandwich) to get to beautiful scenic vistas… and when asked to leave these points of interest to move on to the next, retorted with “hold on, I’m soaking it all in”… this should be known as travelers bi-polar disease (TBPD - I’m checking the copyright on this) It doesn’t make you any cooler when you consistantly treat a piece of shit Chevy Malibu like a Formula 1 race car. There is no need to shift gears everytime the vehicle hits 3000 RPM… heck, I didn’t even know rentals had RPM.
- If you’re still lost in this cloud, let me put it blatantly. You are an 11 on the annoyance scale [a measure of 10 being on a delayed plane sitting in the ‘penalty box' where the kid in the seat next to you is crying, Rosanne Barr is sitting in front of you exchanging quips with Rosie O'Donnell and the only movie playing is Dude, Where's My Car]
The purpose of this literary diatribe is stress the importance of knowing who you are going to be weekending with. If I save just one consultant from having to go through this, this post is a success.
(Sigh)