The convention didn’t actually start until Thursday, but on Wednesday, I had to set up our display table.  I also wanted to sit in on part of a training workshop.  Well, for security reasons, they had only one set of doors open to get into the Expo Hall.  Of course, our display area was all the way at the other end of the hall from these doors.  And the Expo Hall was approximately the length of… oh, the state of California.  (Actually, it was 1,000 feet long – that’s almost three football fields.)  So half my day consisted of walking all the way to the back, finding that our supplies weren’t there yet (or the tables weren’t there yet, or they were vacuuming the floor and shooing people out of the area), and walking back to the door, all the while dodging the forklifts piled so high that their operators couldn’t see things in front of them, like people, and the piles of trash, and the occasional industrial staple or nail that would pierce the sole of my shoe.

Now, I’m not going to piss and moan for pages about how I was mistreated during the convention, partly because I know it’s boring, partly because I did get a free trip to San Diego out of it, and partly because I’ve been reading all these things about companies firing their employees for stuff the employees write on their own personal websites (even though I haven’t told anyone at work about this site and you can’t find it by Googling my name, I think a little paranoia is not unwise).  But I would like to give you an idea of why I was so tired and cranky; my main job was to staff our display table, so every time I wanted to go to a seminar or get food or a drink or do anything, I had to walk all the way down to the other end of the hall (what really pissed me off was that my hotel was closest to the end of the hall where I was stationed, but when it was finally time for me to leave, I still had to walk all the way down to the open doors and then walk all the way back up on the outside).  Not that I got to do any of those things, because the people who were scheduled to take over at the display table for me never did, and I have this pesky work ethic that doesn’t allow me to just walk away from a job even if it’s technically no longer my responsibility.  This dovetails nicely with my martyr complex (perhaps from being a Mawrtyr?), incidentally.

So I had plenty of reason for being angry and exhausted and snappish, and that was just from the way my coworkers were treating me (for a change, dealing with our members was actually one of the more pleasant parts of the ordeal).  I would go from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. without food or drink, because I was too conscientious to walk away from my post without someone to replace me, and even then only be able to eat because someone from another department kindly brought me lunch.  I dealt with several members who were angry because one of my coworkers doesn’t return her phone calls, and they were just as happy to yell at me as at her.  I missed several seminars that I had wanted to attend.  I took a long bus ride out to the Salk Institute at La Jolla for a ceremony that I had volunteered to help out with, and when I got there, I found out that my assistance was no longer needed, but I had to stay at this boring ceremony anyway because the bus wasn’t going back until it was over, whereas if I had known I wasn’t needed, I could have gone back to my hotel two hours earlier (it wasn’t a total loss, though – I got to see some of the hang-gliders over the ocean, and I got to see someone step in the water feature, which is a narrow canal that runs down the middle of the courtyard of the Salk Institute [which, incidentally, was designed by Louis Kahn, who also designed the ugliest dorm at my college]; you can’t see it until you’re on top of it, but it is one of the most famous features of the building, and it’s depicted on the posters and convention guides for our convention, and someone was posted to warn people about it [that was supposed to be my job], and yet some bozo fell in it anyway, which I thought was hilarious).

But, without all that frustration and rudeness and exhaustion, I would never had had the nicest experience of my time in San Diego.

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