Getting Drunk in First Class

I’ve pissed away endless hours in every airline lounge you can think of, slamming down more booze than a thrice-divorced Managing Partner, waiting for delayed flights and hoping my return flight home doesn’t get canceled. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter your airline status, number of butt-in-seat (BIS) miles you’ve flown, or the particular airline. Shit happens when you’re on the road in this profession. Sure, there is also the regular, slowly decreasing utility of a 5-minute masturbation session in the hotel after a rough death march as part of some 8-week-long intense HR segmentation strategy project located in a shit-town in New Mexico for a latex materials client I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about. Even that depressing memory doesn’t get me more angry than missing a flight home or being delayed for 6 hours due to LOW CIGS (aka Low Ceilings) or MULTITAXI (aka “Rush Hour”, aka 4-6 PM every fucking Thursday) or worse, GATE/HOLD (aka “our unionized employees are too big, fat, and slow to get their shit together taxi the plane in”).

I know, I know, safety is important. After all, what is the point of going home if you’re just going to crash land somewhere over Kansas because of a random ass tornado, right? I don’t know, I internally debate whether a crash landing would be more desirable than having to stay on the client site or in the shitty ass airport any longer than I have to stay. Besides, in a crash landing, I’m sure I could assume a leadership position and assist my fellow VBITs to escape the skin-melting inferno coming from the ruptured engine that is now spewing flaming hot jet fuel everywhere. I pray for the day when I can really show my talent: It’s what Senior Consultants are made of, man.

I don’t even have a wife or kids to go home to so what do I care about arriving any sooner than I need to be? All that usually happens is I’ll get home about 10 PM or so and probably rub another one off before bed. I can barely function each day without a good rub, can you?

Flying home is one thing but what about when I’m putting the client’s money to good use by heading to Santiago, Chile for a weekend “simply because I can”? That’s when things really start to piss me off and I start thinking about going back to stalk the only hot TSA employee I’ve ever witnessed back at the security checkpoint. I figure if I don’t try to hit on her now, she might quit in a few weeks and do something crazy like go to college; I may never see her again.

Passing the time leaves only so many substitutes. In between shots of Patrón at the airline lounge bar, I become increasingly retarded and unable to finish my Sudoku puzzles. Usually I end up asking the bartender to flip to the cartoon network. God and it’s at that point that I allow myself to start striking up small talk with other lonely, depressing travelers in the lounge. Yes, the same fucking travelers who all seem to have airline status like I do and are vying for the exact same coveted business class seats I am trying to hoard. Bastards… I don’t like you.

Please, oh fellow consultants, what do you do in the airport waiting for shitty ass flights out of LaGuardia or John Fucking Kennedy back to Los Angeles? Help me control my insanity before I do something really stupid like leave the firm and find a real job where I have to actually buy my own lunches and dinners or have to work with really dumb people in Fortune 500 companies. Agh!