Tom, the company's Regional Manager called me to see if I could join him for lunch. He wanted to go over some preliminaries before I started out for my scheduled trip to the home office. Tom rarely had lunch with anyone other than the occasional Branch Managers he wanted to reward. He was in a rank of his own in our building. He carried himself that way too. He was, according to him, superior and there was an unspoken rule that when you saw him, you were to acknowledge that fact. Ya, in essence, he was a pompous prick. And virtually everyone in the office hated him.
He drove us to the somewhat swank Sam Sneed's in his BMW and it wasn't long after being seated he started showing his attitude off to the waitress snottily complaining about the silverware. I guess it wasn't polished enough or something. She apologized earnestly and quickly replaced his set of utensils without batting an eye. I watched her for any sign of animosity towards Tom since I knew I would have been pissed had he treated me like he had just treated her, seemingly blaming her personally. But she was cool as a cucumber. I guess she's used to blowhards here, the restaurant attracts rich, arrogant white guys a lot, I guess.
Once he finished dictating his multi-exemption-filled order (ie: toasted lightly, but substitute this for that, and this on the side, and an extra this...you know, making it more difficult just because he wanted to be an asshole), Tom dismissed the waitress with a faint wave of his hand and turned to me. He began listing the things I should NOT do on this trip. Drinking was number one. And it was stressed as the most important.
After our lunch I went back to my office and it was Roger's turn to meet with me. Roger was the Branch Manager, my direct boss. I joined him in his darkened office, seated with my back cautiously close to his gnarled six foot tall potted cactus. Roger's management style was decidedly opposite that of Tom's. Where Tom was all X-Theory, Roger molded his team into a pseudo family. We could all speak freely and act on our own decisions. I could never decide whether I thought Roger was just very empowering or very incompetent. Either way, Steve (my counterpart in our office) and I were left to run the place as we pleased. And I loved it.
Roger explained why Tom was nervous about this business trip. Every summer, the home office does this Headquarters open house and invites a few select up-and-coming managers to meet with the executive staff and enjoy a week in the New York City area. Though the trip is touted as a chance for us new managers to see how the home office operates, it's also a chance for them to see how we operate. A few years back, one of the invitees from Orlando embarrassed themselves and ultimately Tom by getting drunk and arrested in a bar fight. Needless to say, that guy was soon fired and Tom was still having a hard time getting over it. It was well-known Tom was eying a VP seat and having wayward team members was not how he wanted to be known to home office execs.
The flight to Newark was quick and uneventful. On the plane with me were 2 other ABMs from the other Orlando-based offices called Orlando 1 and 2 respectively (I was from Orlando 3). We were greeted there by our defacto chaperone Jim, the counterpart to Tom, but for the Southeast Region. He was traveling with the 3 selectees from the company's Tempe, Arizona office. We had to wait for our counterparts from the Omaha office. 2 other ABMs would join us at the hotel since they were from New Jersey and were driving up to Mahwah, our destination.
Rooms were assigned and shared, but, by luck of the draw, I was the odd man out so I got a room to myself. After we were settled in we all met in the lobby and Jim took us to a nearby steak house restaurant. It was pleasant be we were on a work-related trip so we were careful to moderate our actions and words as much as we would if we were in the office.
Over the course of the next week we attended all sorts of meetings and got to see the operations of various departments that affected our goals at our respective branch offices. It was a well-organized and tightly scheduled set of events. We even had lunch one day at a fine French restaurant in the nearby exclusive enclave of Suffern, NY with the much revered and mysterious CEO of this privately held company. It was funny how we all tried to shine during our one opportunity to ask casual questions of our "fearless leader". Oh how we tried to sound intelligent and success-driven.
One of our last nights here, we were taken to a great old Italian restaurant in the Bronx where everything was served family-style at long tables and though we had to wait almost 2 hours to be seated, the food was excellent. Nothing fancy, very rustic Italian, but oh so homemade tasting. Later, we wanted to have a night on the town and though we invited Jim, he decided to head back to the hotel with one of the execs from the home office who joined us for dinner. So we were left the rented van and pointed our way towards Manhattan. Part-ay!
Oh some of these guys were on the wild side, and though most of us had been on our best behavior, we now let our hair down, so to speak, and cruised our way towards Times Square. After parking we walked with mouths agape down the heart of Times Square staring at all the neon and flashing lights, watching the ebb and flow of the sea of human and automobile traffic. We stopped at a liquor store and pitched in to buy a big bottle of Seagram's 7, then we went to Burger King, each bought a large frozen Coke (remember that craze?) dumped half of it, and filled our innocent looking fast food drink cups with a slurry mixture of frozen Coke and whiskey.
Before long we were drunk and driving around the streets of the city, a couple of the girls in our group even started flashing their tits through the van windows as we passed by pedestrians.
The next morning Jim wondered why we all seemed to be a bit sluggish but no one fessed up and told him about our Times Square drink fest. Later that day, as we made our way back towards the airport, we stopped at a small riverside park across the Hudson from lower Manhattan to take pictures. I remember we got some nice stranger to snap a group photo of all of us posing with the skyline of Manhattan, including the towering twin World Trade Center buildings behind us.
When we arrived home at Orlando International Airport, I bid goodbye to the two other managers from Orlando and made my way towards the parking garage. I passed by an airport bar with their TVs tuned to a breaking news event. The small private plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. had gone down on its way to Martha's Vineyard. He and his wife were presumed dead.
He drove us to the somewhat swank Sam Sneed's in his BMW and it wasn't long after being seated he started showing his attitude off to the waitress snottily complaining about the silverware. I guess it wasn't polished enough or something. She apologized earnestly and quickly replaced his set of utensils without batting an eye. I watched her for any sign of animosity towards Tom since I knew I would have been pissed had he treated me like he had just treated her, seemingly blaming her personally. But she was cool as a cucumber. I guess she's used to blowhards here, the restaurant attracts rich, arrogant white guys a lot, I guess.
Once he finished dictating his multi-exemption-filled order (ie: toasted lightly, but substitute this for that, and this on the side, and an extra this...you know, making it more difficult just because he wanted to be an asshole), Tom dismissed the waitress with a faint wave of his hand and turned to me. He began listing the things I should NOT do on this trip. Drinking was number one. And it was stressed as the most important.
After our lunch I went back to my office and it was Roger's turn to meet with me. Roger was the Branch Manager, my direct boss. I joined him in his darkened office, seated with my back cautiously close to his gnarled six foot tall potted cactus. Roger's management style was decidedly opposite that of Tom's. Where Tom was all X-Theory, Roger molded his team into a pseudo family. We could all speak freely and act on our own decisions. I could never decide whether I thought Roger was just very empowering or very incompetent. Either way, Steve (my counterpart in our office) and I were left to run the place as we pleased. And I loved it.
Roger explained why Tom was nervous about this business trip. Every summer, the home office does this Headquarters open house and invites a few select up-and-coming managers to meet with the executive staff and enjoy a week in the New York City area. Though the trip is touted as a chance for us new managers to see how the home office operates, it's also a chance for them to see how we operate. A few years back, one of the invitees from Orlando embarrassed themselves and ultimately Tom by getting drunk and arrested in a bar fight. Needless to say, that guy was soon fired and Tom was still having a hard time getting over it. It was well-known Tom was eying a VP seat and having wayward team members was not how he wanted to be known to home office execs.
The flight to Newark was quick and uneventful. On the plane with me were 2 other ABMs from the other Orlando-based offices called Orlando 1 and 2 respectively (I was from Orlando 3). We were greeted there by our defacto chaperone Jim, the counterpart to Tom, but for the Southeast Region. He was traveling with the 3 selectees from the company's Tempe, Arizona office. We had to wait for our counterparts from the Omaha office. 2 other ABMs would join us at the hotel since they were from New Jersey and were driving up to Mahwah, our destination.
Rooms were assigned and shared, but, by luck of the draw, I was the odd man out so I got a room to myself. After we were settled in we all met in the lobby and Jim took us to a nearby steak house restaurant. It was pleasant be we were on a work-related trip so we were careful to moderate our actions and words as much as we would if we were in the office.
Over the course of the next week we attended all sorts of meetings and got to see the operations of various departments that affected our goals at our respective branch offices. It was a well-organized and tightly scheduled set of events. We even had lunch one day at a fine French restaurant in the nearby exclusive enclave of Suffern, NY with the much revered and mysterious CEO of this privately held company. It was funny how we all tried to shine during our one opportunity to ask casual questions of our "fearless leader". Oh how we tried to sound intelligent and success-driven.
One of our last nights here, we were taken to a great old Italian restaurant in the Bronx where everything was served family-style at long tables and though we had to wait almost 2 hours to be seated, the food was excellent. Nothing fancy, very rustic Italian, but oh so homemade tasting. Later, we wanted to have a night on the town and though we invited Jim, he decided to head back to the hotel with one of the execs from the home office who joined us for dinner. So we were left the rented van and pointed our way towards Manhattan. Part-ay!
Oh some of these guys were on the wild side, and though most of us had been on our best behavior, we now let our hair down, so to speak, and cruised our way towards Times Square. After parking we walked with mouths agape down the heart of Times Square staring at all the neon and flashing lights, watching the ebb and flow of the sea of human and automobile traffic. We stopped at a liquor store and pitched in to buy a big bottle of Seagram's 7, then we went to Burger King, each bought a large frozen Coke (remember that craze?) dumped half of it, and filled our innocent looking fast food drink cups with a slurry mixture of frozen Coke and whiskey.
Before long we were drunk and driving around the streets of the city, a couple of the girls in our group even started flashing their tits through the van windows as we passed by pedestrians.
The next morning Jim wondered why we all seemed to be a bit sluggish but no one fessed up and told him about our Times Square drink fest. Later that day, as we made our way back towards the airport, we stopped at a small riverside park across the Hudson from lower Manhattan to take pictures. I remember we got some nice stranger to snap a group photo of all of us posing with the skyline of Manhattan, including the towering twin World Trade Center buildings behind us.
When we arrived home at Orlando International Airport, I bid goodbye to the two other managers from Orlando and made my way towards the parking garage. I passed by an airport bar with their TVs tuned to a breaking news event. The small private plane piloted by John F. Kennedy Jr. had gone down on its way to Martha's Vineyard. He and his wife were presumed dead.