A Quiet Night Alone in San Diego

Two Nights in San Diego #2
At the Westin - Tue, 25 Jun 2024, 9pm

I had choices for when to fly to San Diego Tuesday afternoon. It's not like traveling to New York, or even Chicago, where there might be only one reasonable flight (or two, on different airlines, but at similar times). There were at least four different but reasonable timing options. The question was, what was I solving for in my schedule?

"Let's meet for a nice dinner," the account manager I'm joining in San Diego told me and other other guy flying in for these customer meetings.

Ah! There's what I'm solving for: arrive in time for dinner with colleagues. Thus I changed my flight to an earlier departure. I also acceded to the account manager's preference for the hotel instead of my own choice, so that we'd be in the same spot and could more easily coordinate.

From the airport on Tuesday afternoon I texted the two of them to verify their travel schedules, figuring we could start making dinner plans. "I'm having dinner with my family tonight and will leave for San Diego after that," said the first. "I'll be in after 9."

LOLWUT? This was the guy who proposed I change my plans so we could have dinner together! The other guy wouldn't be in 'til around 9pm, either. Apparently I was the only one fool enough to believe "Let's have dinner together' meant "Let's have dinner together." 😡

Well, taking the earlier flight wasn't the end of the world. I flew during work hours instead of getting sucked in to a full day at my desk then flying during what should be personal time. Dinner alone this evening was relaxing. I ate in the hotel bar, caught up on a bit of work while I was there, and retreated to my room to take it easy the rest of the evening.

I didn't really need the quiet time alone, but since that was all that was available, I took it. What I wanted was the chance to catch up with colleagues in an unhurried setting. Now I'll have to see if I can meet them for breakfast— which I'm almost certain will not happen because they'll have a morning routine that leaves them only enough time for a cup of coffee— or chat with them while we're in the car driving to the client's office. That won't be the same as gathering over dinner.

Six Hours with a Customer

Two Nights in San Diego #3
Leaving a meeting - Wed, 26 Jun 2024, 4pm

Today was the main event I traveled to San Diego for: a six-hour meeting with a major customer. Six hours. When a customer spends that long meeting with you, a vendor, one of two things is true:

1. You are a key strategic vendor. The customer is willing to dedicate essentially a full workday to meeting with you because your solution is that important.


2. The people you're meeting with are bozos. They're able to spend a full day with you because they're not really accountable for anything important. The meeting makes them feel and look important.

Honestly today it felt a bit like both at times. 😅

I say that primarily because in today's meeting we had to review a number of concepts that we've already explained multiple times. It's like some of the people there haven't been listening. ...Actually I shouldn't say "It's like"; it is the case that some of the them haven't been listening.

Once we left the building my colleagues and I agreed that we should avoid trying to do Zoom/etc. meetings with these folks. They plainly haven't been giving us enough attention during such calls. We saw evidence of that today.... One guy asked the same question multiple times because he was reading something on his phone instead of listening to the answer. Another took another meeting during our meeting. He was on a Teams call, muted, while sitting in a conference room with us. A third guy complained multiple times that we "weren't answering his question", when really the problem was that he kept interrupting us while we were trying to answer it such that we could never finish.

So, being onsite with this customer today was enormously valuable... because too many of our remote meetings in the past have been wastes of our time trying to explain things to people who aren't actually paying attention well enough.

Back to the Airport, via Golden Corral

Alaska Travelog #26
ANC Airport - Wed, 19 Jun 2024, 3pm

We're back at Anchorage airport awaiting our flight home. Our aircraft is already here, disembarking passengers from the inbound flight, so that's a good sign for us leaving on time in an hour. In addition the seat map continues to show Hawk and I each having a full row to ourselves. That's at least a good sign we'll have an empty middle seat next to us. But there's no chance of catching an upgrade like on our way to Alaska 5 nights ago.

Earlier today as we were at one of our roadside waterfall stops I asked Hawk what she was thinking of for lunch in Anchorage. "Well," she said hesitantly, "Probably Golden Corral." I nearly bust out laughing because I was thinking the same thing.



It's not that either of us particularly likes this buffet restaurant. It's just the best of poor choices. It's a known quantity, it has a variety menu— one of Hawk's specific requirements was "A place we're sure serves vegetables"... which you might think is every restaurant, but not so much in Alaska— and it'd be fast. And Hawk definitely got her vegetables there. I think they even had three to choose from. 🤣

When we entered ANC airport this afternoon I was surprised again at the size. I was struck by that when we landed, too. Anchorage is a city of 285,000 people. The airport is the size of busy airports in cities 3x the size. And it's busy. Especially Friday when we landed, at midnight, it was bustling. I figure some of that might have been weekend tourist traffic, but the other thing is that as big and sparse and difficult to traverse as Alaska is, if you want to go anywhere else in the state you're at least going to consider flying. It's a 19 hour drive to the state capital, Juneau. ...Maybe longer if there are delays at the ferry terminal or either of the two international borders you have to cross to get there.