Memphis yet again
another week, another trip to Memphis. Fortunately I got a call from Delta right as I was going out the door to tell me that my flight was delayed, but bad part was my flight was delayed by like an hour and a half. meh. Direct flight from Orlando to Memphis and I have issues? huh not good start to the week. So by the time I got into Memphis with the time change it was getting late, thankfully got my bag and shuttled to the hertz lot in record time. Nice rental car got a Ford Escape which will probably be my next company car so that was a good tryout. Worked out fine except for view out the rear window. By the time I got to the Marriot downtown I was starving so I checked in and went right to the hotel restaurant for some dinner, bypassing the room entirely. Food was decent but slow service as usual and it was like 10pm eastern time before I ate. And what is it with Marriots and encountering huge southern baptist missionary conventions?! the hotel was full of em, and for some reason they gave the entire convention access to the concierge lounge so that was a madhouse every morning. The concierge lounge just does not have the capacity to keep up with that kind of crowd.
Tuesday I had to get up early and drive like 30 minutes to Denise's hotel, since I didn't notice that she hadn't picked the Courtyard downtown but a different one out in the countryside blech. of course she wanted to have breakfast to "discuss" things at like 7am, I pushed her off til 8:30. And "discuss" meant showing me the slides in the presentation that they had picked out for me. wtf? I can't do my own. grumble. So of course Denise had scheduled extra appointments for the week without telling me, so off to one account we went so that Matt, the SSC (scientific sales consultant...or useless as I call them) could give a presentation to them which turned out to be totally the wrong presentation since he gave a beginners talk to people who have been doing flow for 15+ years. brilliant. Then we did lunch and went to a second account for the "real" sales presentation purpose for the trip which I mostly did and with good reason. talked for like an hour and a half but really was able to sell the system to the potential customer and oh looked sooo much better than either matt or denise. heh. Finished that up and got back to the hotel around 4, so did some stuff in the room and then walked downtown for a good dinner. At least being downtown there's decent food in walking distance.
Wednesday I slept in a bit and did paperwork in the hotel room most of the morning, and then met denise over at methodist for a brief sales meeting (another unannounced visit) and then we did lunch before going to the lab to continue the sales pitch from yesterday afternoon with an actual instrument demo. I again did most of the talk for almost 2 hours. went pretty well. I also stepped hard on matt for trying to handle a request for follow up training for the account in Birmingham from the beginning of the month...finally told him to forward the email to me and that it was my issue to handle. fuckin stop thinking that you can do my job, your job is to sell into research accounts frickin leave the clinical labs alone. and yes I complained several times to my boss about it. So that was done by like 3 so another early day in the hotel room. Took what turned out to be a loooong walk across town to an italian restaurant, food was good but not the italian I was craving.
Thursday I spent the day back at GI path playing referree between the lab operator and the lab supervisor, also troubleshoot some minor issues they were having. Packed up and left around 4 and headed to the airport. I had a later flight so hung out and read for a while, then tried to get some dinner at Bowl of Pasta...which used to be good but now thier marinara sauce is basically tomatoe water full of chopped up bell pepper. eh I ate around it and just enjoyed the pennae. flight back I only got an exit row seat but still made it home by 11. Oh yeah had an issue with the parking at OIA, when I came in monday afternoon all of the ticket machines at the parking garage entrance were totally down, not spitting tickets no call help button nada. so the only way to get the gates to open was to use my sunpass...so when I tried to exit it took me about 10 min and a supervisor to understand why i didnt have a ticket and that I didnt want to leave the $70 charge on my sunpass. fun.
Friday I slept in and spent the morning catching up on things, signed in to work for a few hours in the afternoon and ughh that was a mistake. ended up going into overtime because cindy had a conference call at 4pm that ended up going until 6:15pm kicking me into overtime. I finally drove over to mark and johns around 5:40 still with the call going on and sat there until the call finished up so we could go to my rescheduled birthday dinner which was a nice gesture on mark and johns part. Peter was out of town and david/keith cancelled cuz keith was stuck at work so it was just mark john marbles and me but it was a nice meal and we hit the good thai place (ie ours). we also figured out what Jim had at thai tanni and I now strongly suspect that the bad smell was turned lime juice. hmmmm.
Spent the rest of the weekend around the house, thought saturday was very productive. Went grocery shopping, did all my laundry, cleaned the house (much needed)and cooked a good meal. Sunday got the pool re-situated (latest issue is now acorns of all things) and cleaned up, ended up cleaning out the pool filter twice on sunday because of all the rain but I did get a couple of hours of xbox in which had been a while.
Upcoming week is gonna be a long one, at least mileage wise. driving to miami on monday, seeing 2 accounts there on tues then driving home. wed driving to augusta, GA to work there thursday and drive back home on friday. Oh and I gotta take mark and john to the airport monday morning for thier michigan vacation. busy busy busy
Tuesday I had to get up early and drive like 30 minutes to Denise's hotel, since I didn't notice that she hadn't picked the Courtyard downtown but a different one out in the countryside blech. of course she wanted to have breakfast to "discuss" things at like 7am, I pushed her off til 8:30. And "discuss" meant showing me the slides in the presentation that they had picked out for me. wtf? I can't do my own. grumble. So of course Denise had scheduled extra appointments for the week without telling me, so off to one account we went so that Matt, the SSC (scientific sales consultant...or useless as I call them) could give a presentation to them which turned out to be totally the wrong presentation since he gave a beginners talk to people who have been doing flow for 15+ years. brilliant. Then we did lunch and went to a second account for the "real" sales presentation purpose for the trip which I mostly did and with good reason. talked for like an hour and a half but really was able to sell the system to the potential customer and oh looked sooo much better than either matt or denise. heh. Finished that up and got back to the hotel around 4, so did some stuff in the room and then walked downtown for a good dinner. At least being downtown there's decent food in walking distance.
Wednesday I slept in a bit and did paperwork in the hotel room most of the morning, and then met denise over at methodist for a brief sales meeting (another unannounced visit) and then we did lunch before going to the lab to continue the sales pitch from yesterday afternoon with an actual instrument demo. I again did most of the talk for almost 2 hours. went pretty well. I also stepped hard on matt for trying to handle a request for follow up training for the account in Birmingham from the beginning of the month...finally told him to forward the email to me and that it was my issue to handle. fuckin stop thinking that you can do my job, your job is to sell into research accounts frickin leave the clinical labs alone. and yes I complained several times to my boss about it. So that was done by like 3 so another early day in the hotel room. Took what turned out to be a loooong walk across town to an italian restaurant, food was good but not the italian I was craving.
Thursday I spent the day back at GI path playing referree between the lab operator and the lab supervisor, also troubleshoot some minor issues they were having. Packed up and left around 4 and headed to the airport. I had a later flight so hung out and read for a while, then tried to get some dinner at Bowl of Pasta...which used to be good but now thier marinara sauce is basically tomatoe water full of chopped up bell pepper. eh I ate around it and just enjoyed the pennae. flight back I only got an exit row seat but still made it home by 11. Oh yeah had an issue with the parking at OIA, when I came in monday afternoon all of the ticket machines at the parking garage entrance were totally down, not spitting tickets no call help button nada. so the only way to get the gates to open was to use my sunpass...so when I tried to exit it took me about 10 min and a supervisor to understand why i didnt have a ticket and that I didnt want to leave the $70 charge on my sunpass. fun.
Friday I slept in and spent the morning catching up on things, signed in to work for a few hours in the afternoon and ughh that was a mistake. ended up going into overtime because cindy had a conference call at 4pm that ended up going until 6:15pm kicking me into overtime. I finally drove over to mark and johns around 5:40 still with the call going on and sat there until the call finished up so we could go to my rescheduled birthday dinner which was a nice gesture on mark and johns part. Peter was out of town and david/keith cancelled cuz keith was stuck at work so it was just mark john marbles and me but it was a nice meal and we hit the good thai place (ie ours). we also figured out what Jim had at thai tanni and I now strongly suspect that the bad smell was turned lime juice. hmmmm.
Spent the rest of the weekend around the house, thought saturday was very productive. Went grocery shopping, did all my laundry, cleaned the house (much needed)and cooked a good meal. Sunday got the pool re-situated (latest issue is now acorns of all things) and cleaned up, ended up cleaning out the pool filter twice on sunday because of all the rain but I did get a couple of hours of xbox in which had been a while.
Upcoming week is gonna be a long one, at least mileage wise. driving to miami on monday, seeing 2 accounts there on tues then driving home. wed driving to augusta, GA to work there thursday and drive back home on friday. Oh and I gotta take mark and john to the airport monday morning for thier michigan vacation. busy busy busy