There are no bad owners, only bad dogs

2004-10-13

Mr. Toad's wild ride

Who needs Disneyland? Just sit in the front row of the upper deck of a double decker bus in England. It's cheaper and more scary. I yelled "wheeee" and held my arms up to prove my courage several times between Oxford and London on Monday. To be fair, of all the things we almost hit, most of them were organic, like people and trees. Of the stuff we actually hit, all of them were tree branches. I sat right in front of the almost empty bus, put my bag on the seat next to me in the almost empty bus, and a French woman insisted that I move my bag so she could sit next to me on the almost empty bus. All in all, what with the side mirror on the bus missing the side mirrors on trucks by less than an inch on several 60 mph occasions, it was more exciting than a bus trip has any business being. Every time we just missed clipping a truck, I had to gasp. It never got old!

More about why I hate business travel: On Monday night I stayed in a Citadines Apart'hotel (I know, it's not even a word!) and I got to sleep on a ... fold-out sofa. On the plus side, the room had a mini-kitchen which was useless to me since I had no plans to cook. Ever. We were taken to dinner -- in London, a cosmopolitan, multicultural city where there are many, many dining choices -- to a restaurant where the kitchen closed at 8 pm. We got our order in (the first time) at 7:59 pm. We had to order again, though, because they were out of most of what we had ordered. We eventually got the waiter to tell us what they actually had, and went from there. Coffee and dessert? Luckily, the coffee urn had not been turned off (or maybe it had and they microwaved the coffee). But dessert was out of the question. Although there were only two choices (cheesecake and something chocolate), the kitchen was closed, meaning that no one was willing to put a piece of cheesecake onto a plate for us, so it was just back to the fold-out couch. And a sleepless night. In a "hotel" where the phones didn't work, so a wake-up call was not possible.

Because, generally speaking, people are assholes, it was left to the CFO of one of the companies and me to pack up a lot of crap after the business extravaganza was over. Everyone else just left, left their display crap and materials sitting there, and assumed some moron would clean up after them. They were right.

I accidentally ate another bite of a cat food sandwich, but this time it was on a bagel. It didn't really help. It's hard to spit out a mouth of cat food into a napkin in a business setting... no, it really isn't. I guess it would be hard if worried about what other people think. I stopped that a while ago.

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