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Exit Interview
What a short, strange trip it’s been
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Nancy can be reached at |
Years ago when my children were small and I was working part time, my husband would take an occasional business trip, much to my resentment. Not one to suffer in silence, I would describe my day over the phone to him, embellishing all the horrible things his children were doing while he was sitting in the bar having a beer or eating room service or—his worst offense—talking to grown ups.
He didn’t view it as glamorous, of course. He’d recount tales about standing in long lines at the airport; sitting in cramped airplane seats; the stale, dry hotel air; the fact that it was engineers he was talking to over a beer—blah, blah, blah, there wasn’t a sympathetic bone in my body.
Now that I’m doing quite a bit of business travel myself, I owe my husband a huge apology.
There’s no way his business trips were ever as much fun as mine are now. Plus, taking care of our two dogs is much more stressful than the three kids were.
Take, for instance, my recent trip to Miami for the Franchise Expo South. When we arrived on the exhibit floor the day before the doors opened to the public, Sales Manager Kevin Pietsch and I discovered the display for our booth hadn’t arrived. There was nothing we could do but exit the unair-conditioned expo hall and go out into the 80-degree Miami sunshine to eat lunch at an outdoor café and take in the colorful parade of South Beach locals and tourists.
On the way back to the hotel, Kevin noticed the oversized Duck Tours vehicle parked at the curb and decided we should take the tour. Miami doesn’t have the history of, say, a Boston, so most of the sights our tour guide pointed out were sites where such notable events took place as the filming of “Pet Detective” with Jim Carey, J.Lo’s apartment building and the front steps of the home where fashion designer Versace was gunned down. Once the street vehicle had made its descent into Biscayne Bay, we were privy to basketball superstar Shaq’s house; the 27,000-square-foot, three-bedroom home owned by the man who invented generic drugs (the legal kind); and the residence 50 cats inherited when their owner died (“I just hope the cats don’t let the house go to the dogs,” our guide Rodney Dangerduck quipped—yep, that’s the kind of humor you get on the Duck Tour).
Something that did provide takeaway value was his lecture on Miami architecture, which was described as nautical art deco. Once that fact was pointed out, it was interesting to note the number of old buildings that did look like ships—from their round porthole windows to their flat roofs to their guardrails surrounding decks overlooking pavement, not ocean.
I am not a fan of camp, however, and the mandatory quacking at passersby on the trip down a tony street of independent restaurants and trendy shops was painful. Kevin and I both looked down at our shoes the entire time. “We will never mention this once we escape,” we promised each other.
That evening while Kevin returned to the exhibit hall to set up the booth, I walked for an hour on the beach and then got ready to go out to dinner. (And, yes, I did offer to help Kevin, but he declined. I think he needed a break from me.)
The two of us were invited by attorney Lane Fisher to accompany a group celebrating Hot Dish President Dawn Lawin’s birthday. At Barton G’s, Jen Onnen, Hot Dish’s vice president, handed us all an exotic martini with a brown monkey dangling from the rim. No one wanted their plastic monkey, so I collected three—thinking I could play that link-the-monkeys-by-the-arms game later in my hotel room—and then someone discovered the monkeys were solid chocolate and I had to give them back. Barton G’s food was some of the best I’ve tasted and the presentation made it almost too good to eat—the lobster pop tarts, for instance, were served in a silver toaster.
Afterward, we all went to The Delano Hotel for a drink. According to Jenn Onnen this was the same outdoor venue a bikini-clad Lindsay Lohen was seen running through the week before. I wouldn’t have noticed, I was too taken by the progression of white king-sized beds that lined the pool. Apparently, people in Miami like to recline in public. We spotted quite a few bed-like seats in other locales, as well.
It’s a good thing my husband and coworkers don’t read my column or they might not sympathize with me when I complain about how tired I am when I return from these arduous business trips.
But, trust me, the Miami trip was not the norm. At most events, I see only the airport, the inside of my hotel room and the convention site—and, OK, one or two very good restaurants.
But décor aside, it’s really the people I like. It’s a little known fact that most franchise lawyers are hired for their personalities and sense of humor, and then if they prove to have a knack for practicing law—bonus! Franchise sales people are equally fun, although that should be a given—they’re in the business of being personable.
I also had a chance to dine with, but only briefly talk to, Erik Premont with Salad Creations and Winestyles. He briefly told me about his upcoming adoption of a little girl with Down syndrome. By the time I returned to my office and had a chance to call him, Dasha had died in the Russian orphanage—which makes his story even more urgent. Be sure to read about it in ourarticle:Gift Giving.
Sometimes I feel frivolously shallow. I easily can get caught with my priorities down. Connecting with people like Erik—and other wonderful people in franchising—makes me realize that I am always on a pretty gratifying business trip.
Disclosure: Credit for the clever headline on the PetPeePee story in UpFront should go to Terry Corkery of FranchiseWorks, who came up with it as we walked the show floor together.
