Late Night, Early Morning in Chicago
Aug. 13th, 2025 05:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerChicago Trip Log #3
Downtown Chicago - Tue, 12 Aug 2025, 6:30am
Don't hit it too hard the first night. That's one of my rules of sales trips. There's a temptation when in a new location, meeting colleagues I maybe haven't seen in a while, not being tired from a full day of meetings (yet), and wanting to live it up after the many little ignominies of flying coach, that all contribute to eating and drinking too much and staying up too late the first night of a trip. I went into last night with good intentions... and feel like I mostly failed.
At first I thought I would enjoy a casual dinner and retire early to my picturesque corner room overlooking the park. I waited downstairs for a while to see if any colleagues might happen by who'd like to join me. One did... and she dragged me off to a steak house where a colleague of our had made a reservation. Good news: it's Bavette's Bar & Boeuf, a well regarded steak restaurant in Chicago. And the 5 of us there had a great time. And I enjoyed a few drinks without getting drunk. Bad news: I didn't get back until 11pm. And I'd eaten so richly that between that and the time zone change, I couldn't fall asleep until almost 1:30am. Even worse news: at 5:30am my body shouted, "Adrenaline, motherfucker!" for no goddamn reason and woke me up well before even my 6:15am alarm.
So, here I am. I haven't even started the first day of 3 days of sales training, and already I feel like it's going to be a long slog. 😖
Update: Oh, at the restaurant I mentioned to one or two of my colleagues how happy I was with my nice room. They got corner rooms, too! Of course, they also made Club this past year— like I did. So maybe the upgraded rooms were doled out to us top performers, similar to when they sent a chauffeur in a $600,000 car to pick us up from the airport a few years ago.
Downtown Chicago - Tue, 12 Aug 2025, 6:30am
Don't hit it too hard the first night. That's one of my rules of sales trips. There's a temptation when in a new location, meeting colleagues I maybe haven't seen in a while, not being tired from a full day of meetings (yet), and wanting to live it up after the many little ignominies of flying coach, that all contribute to eating and drinking too much and staying up too late the first night of a trip. I went into last night with good intentions... and feel like I mostly failed.
At first I thought I would enjoy a casual dinner and retire early to my picturesque corner room overlooking the park. I waited downstairs for a while to see if any colleagues might happen by who'd like to join me. One did... and she dragged me off to a steak house where a colleague of our had made a reservation. Good news: it's Bavette's Bar & Boeuf, a well regarded steak restaurant in Chicago. And the 5 of us there had a great time. And I enjoyed a few drinks without getting drunk. Bad news: I didn't get back until 11pm. And I'd eaten so richly that between that and the time zone change, I couldn't fall asleep until almost 1:30am. Even worse news: at 5:30am my body shouted, "Adrenaline, motherfucker!" for no goddamn reason and woke me up well before even my 6:15am alarm.
So, here I am. I haven't even started the first day of 3 days of sales training, and already I feel like it's going to be a long slog. 😖
Update: Oh, at the restaurant I mentioned to one or two of my colleagues how happy I was with my nice room. They got corner rooms, too! Of course, they also made Club this past year— like I did. So maybe the upgraded rooms were doled out to us top performers, similar to when they sent a chauffeur in a $600,000 car to pick us up from the airport a few years ago.
