Work Daze

In the words of the great wise man, Jimmy Webb – “this time we almost made it, girl.”

Yes, this time we went to a professional convention and almost made it to the finish line…the grand final…the fat lady’s last song. Specifically, we arrived on Thursday in time for registration, stayed all the way through Friday’s meetings, Lunch-N-Learns, and no-host cocktail parties. But when the Rise ‘n Shine seminars were finished on Saturday, and facing an afternoon of keynotes leading to the big 50’s dance party that ended the event, we bolted like Julia Roberts in The Runaway Bride.

Counting a delightful 12-hour schlep from San Francisco to Kansas City, that’s more than 50% attendance, a feat for which we think we deserve a medal. [You can hold off on striking the medal until the results of the drug tests come in, but I’m telling you right now, if there was testosterone in Marriott’s coffee, I didn’t know it.]

I don’t care what profession you are in, or how passionately you are devoted to it, there’s something absolutely numbing about a big convention. I may be wrong, but if the government really wanted to make life difficult for the prisoners at Guantanemo, they could cancel the attack dogs and bring in four hundred convention-crazy ophthalmologists.

Those prisoners would be spilling their guts in no time.

The irony of all this is that before I started going to these events, I actually felt envious of convention attendees. I was working near a large convention center and it seemed that almost every week the streets were full of ebullient, affable pharmacists or chip designers or appliance wholesalers, their plastic name badges hanging from their necks like high-class corporate bling.

Some of the conventions even featured great entertainers, ancient pop stars like, well, Jimmy Webb, who had been dragged from the top-ten graveyard to perform one more time for an audience of adoring dental assistants.

It wasn’t until I actually started attending conventions that I realized I had misjudged the glitz and glamour of a pack of rowdy periodontists. Fact is, conventions are a big drag.

If you have to leave the warmth and safety of your cubical to go to a convention, here are some tips for surviving:

1. Prepare to be friendly.

Despite the jam-packed schedule of specious speeches by learned layabouts, industry gurus, and other charlatans, the real purpose of going to a convention is to network. Despite what you tell your boss, you’re not going to learn how to do your job better. What you better learn is where your next job is going to be.

To insure that you are fresh and affable for every “meet and greet,” skip all the lectures and classes. You’ll want to sleep during the day if you want to be up all night partying with your new friends. That is, anyone who you can immediately pester the moment the convention ends to remind them of their drunken promise to slip your resume on their boss’s desktop.

Whether your drug of choice is Prozac, Smirnoff, or the latest Ashlee Simpson CD, be sure to pack whatever is necessary to shift your usually sullen and withdrawn personality into frat-boy party-girl mode. Remember: a Stephen Hawken may get a good job review, but the next new job will be going to Paris Hilton.

2. Pace Yourself

One problem with conventions is that you usually wind up spending all your time in enclosed places, like hotels and convention centers. Without exposure to fresh air, and with constant exposure to breakfast pastries, fast-food lunches, and elaborate dinners with drinks on the house, you can find whatever claim you may make for good health to be rapidly slipping from your crumb-encrusted, booze-soaked, guacamole-stained fingers.

Remember to step outside every two or three hours to breath whatever passes for fresh air in the convention city. It’s a good way to stay healthy and to meet the smoking elite, invariably the only folks who, not finding the convention hall sufficiently toxic, do occasionally step outside to fill their lungs with carcinogenic. [Be definitely sure to give your resumes to these folks; they surely won’t be around for long.]

3. Accept all freebies

Every convention has a sponsor hall where potential suppliers try to bribe you with cheap Chinese-made gewgaws, like leaky logo pens, expandable mini-sponges, and monogrammed golf-tees. Scoop up all of this junk, but don’t consider it accepting a bribe. Consider it doing your Christmas shopping.