Thursday, April 24, 2008

signed, Annoyed in Boston

The conference was fine, but don't even get me started on dinner.
.
.
.
.
Ok, I'll tell you. It was painful. Torturous. Tarantula!

A vendor invited me and some colleagues out to dinner and I stupidly agreed, thinking hey, won't this be nice? and I also was looking forward to meeting some of my colleagues. The company that I work for has 325,000 employees (yes, that's the right amount of zeroes) so you don't often get to meet people who aren't in your immediate group. I have spoken with a couple of these people by phone, and thought it would be nice to get a face to go with the name. WRONG.

Firstly, the one person who I have worked with a few times by phone is not someone that I like very much. She's sort of vacuous and dull. Not surprisingly, she looks like Dr. Laura. *shudder* Secondly, I was the youngest one (by about 10 - 30 years) in the colleague group so everyone dismissed me right away. Thirdly, I wasn't carrying a Prada purse or saying things like well, I lived in New York for 4 years - did I mention I lived on the Upper West Side? - so I really consider myself a New Yorker, but we've lived in Virginia for 10 years now. [p.s. she brought this up no fewer than 8 times during dinner. I wish I were kidding.] Fourthly, I don't give a shit about Prada purses so when the conversation would inevitably shift to how lucky I am to live in proximity to Rodeo Drive because they have the BEST purses there! I had no input. Fifthly, I had to listen to the "quarter life crisis" of the 25 year old vendor rep, who was whining about not doing anything with her life. Yeah, she owns her own condo and drives a Mercedes and carries a Prada purse (bought on Rodeo Drive!) and travels extensively and takes weekend trips to the Caribbean because she has so many airline miles and won an all-expenses paid trip to California (Rodeo Drive!) and Paris through a random drawing at work, but she's still depressed. I mean, she's turning TWENTY FIVE in three weeks. How glum can it get? Sixthly, the New Yorker never missed an opportunity to talk about her baby and how her engagment was a whirlwind and how she got pregnant on the honeymoon (in Italy!). Seventhly, the New Yorker also had a 9-11 story to fit every occassion, but only she knows the true magnitude of the event because "I mean, I was living on the Upper West Side! I was 4 miles away! Practically in the middle of it! We had no telephone service! Only internet!" Eighthly, one of the ladies kept (literally) squealing about how much FUN this was to have a girls' night out! Ninthly, someone else kept blabbering about how when they lived in New York, she would go to Paris all the time, just for the weekend. Sometimes by herself. In fact, when she was 5 months pregnant... BLARGH. Tenthly, I don't drink wine and everyone looked at me like I just announced that I had ass cancer. They all looked concerned and about to cry.

The highlight is that I didn't have to foot the bill: ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Plus tip. In fairness, I only ordered one small lobster thing and they ordered all the rest. I didn't eat the ridiculous appetizers or even touch their expensive wine (or 7 different desserts).

Oh, and one thing that made me GIGGLE today was one of the speakers kept saying "explicit" when she meant "exact". So she'd show a screen shot of a website and say "and here you can read the explicit content as it appears on the site" or "this is explicitly what it says..."

5 comments:

amyp said...

i am sorry, that sounds dreadful. i don't really drink wine either - it gives me headaches - and people (ok mostly women) always seem taken aback...and when i order scotch instead, they look at me like i've grown a second head.

Giggly said...

Ha! Ha! Ha! I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't drink wine. A lot of our old friends wives work at wineries and brag about all the blah, blah, blah, wine and I have no clue what they're talking about.
Sorry you had a torturous dinner :(

Anonymous said...

i would drink wine by the buckets if i could. but that is just me. and mostly i drink beer as wine does give me headaches.

ps the ass cancer comment made me laugh out loud.

Anonymous said...

I would also drink wine by the buckets if I could afford it. Although I prefer vodka and whiskey. And dark beer...

Anonymous said...

(If I shriek about a girls' night out please ignore me) ;)

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin