Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Ironically the day after a(nother) 6:30am meeting was canceled on short notice, after I'd already gotten up early for the day, today the opposite happened. A meeting scheduled for 9am was moved 2 hours earlier, to 7am, and I was only told at 7:45.

This was Day 2 of my all-day intensive training I traveled to Orange County for. My boss sent me a Slack message at 7:45am. "Hey, not sure if you saw the message, but [C level exec] said we're starting today at 7am."

Oookay. "Give me about 10 minutes to get down there," I wrote back.

I was already showered and dressed for the day— I had an 8am online meeting I was preparing for— so all I had to do was quickly pack my suitcase to leave my room for the day. And that was quick because I laid things out in order last night.

BTW, it turns out there was no message I could've seen before 7:45am. The CxO announced the change orally at dinner last night. The dinner I skipped because I was sick. There was no email update or slack message to the group. Just my boss reaching out to me individually 45 minutes late to ask me if I "saw" it.

Sheesh.

Italy Travelog #19½
Chia, Sardinia - Wednesday, 28 May 2025, 2pm

Oops, this blog got lost in my backlog. I'll post it now, slightly out of order. Wednesday after our cave tour at Grotto Is Zuddas we were taken to a restaurant a few miles from the hotel where we were promised cibo tipico, typical (local) food. Local cuisine, according to two people I heard from earlier in the day and yesterday, surprisingly is not heavy on fish. That's surprising because Sardinia is an island so it's, well, surrounded by fish. But recall that historically, residents never settled close to the coast because of frequent raids by pirates and foreign powers. So it was a bit surprising when we sat down to a preselected menu that was all fish.

The all-fish thing was even more surprising because two people in our group of 8 had specified "no fish" on the planning form asking for dietary restrictions. Oh, and 1 needed gluten-free... and the menu was all fish and pasta.

Obviously something broke in the chain of communication from us to the organizer to the restaurant. But to make it worse, the restaurant had difficulty understanding why anything was wrong even when we communicated it repeatedly. I've read that food allergies are poorly understood/unappreciated in European countries relative to the US. I mean, there are still plenty of people in the US who think food allergies are bullshit but they seem to be a minority now, and restaurants pretty much all know how to handle dietary restrictions. It was morbidly interesting to see this play out in real life. The restaurants staff just didn't get it.

The first challenge we had to overcome was English-to-Italian. Only one staff member, the manager, acknowledged speaking any English. Next, the manager, when confronted with news the food allergies, initially was combative. He told us that the menu was already chosen and the food was already prepared.

We pushed back, noting that, "Hey, you're a restaurant, you must have other food you can serve us instead." After some discussion their counter-offer was pork chops instead of seafood. That worked for one of our no-seafood group members, but not Hawk— whose dietary restriction list began with "no pork, no seafood". Obviously they hadn't gotten that memo. Or they decided it was just bullshit from childish picky eaters who need to be taught the two options at the dinner table are "take it or leave it".

There was also the gluten-free issue to resolve. The restaurant did have gluten-free pasta, it turned out. Or at least a different-shaped pasta they said was gluten free. I'm skeptical about that because I watched the waiters scooping food from one plate to another and back again. If you know anything about food allergies, you know that transferring items from one plate to another with common utensils is a no-no. Upon seeing that I lost all trust in the restaurant's ability to take our needs seriously and advised anyone with allergies not to eat.

Somehow Hawk did have an allergic reaction. I think they served all of us half plates of gluten-free pasta. It was hard to tell what it really was. Regardless, something in the pasta or sauce triggered an allergic reaction for Hawk. Fortunately it was a mild one that she was able to treat by taking a Benadryl pill. But actually getting ill from the food at the table put the final nail in the coffin of having any enjoyment at the restaurant.

I'm leaving for Italy in... [glances at clock]... 15 hours and I haven't packed. Why am I spending a few minutes to blog about that here instead of, like, actually packing? Sigh. It's because I'm struggling with motivation right now. And no, the fact that I'm going to Italy for the first time ever isn't enough to motivate me.

What's demotivating me? Going on this trip is tied up with my frustrations about my job. Because this trip, though it's a vacation, is a work-sponsored vacation trip. And I had fresh frustrations in a long afternoon at work today.

For the moment I'm just relaxing to see if I can get over my motivation gap naturally. I don't need to panic about getting ready. I remind myself of three things about this trip: One, I've traveled a bazillion times before. I know I can pack a bag quickly. Two, this trip is only a week— well, 8.5 days. It's not like I'm packing for a month. Three, I only need to pack one style of clothes. It's a beach/warm weather/tourist trip. I'll back mostly beach-y clothes, a few changes of European-street-casual clothes, and a light sweater for cool evenings. It's not like I have to pack all that and a couple of two-piece suits. Or a tuxedo. (There's no high-stakes, James Bond-esuqe Casino Royale action planned on this trip.)

For a long time "Bags Fly Free!" has a slogan of Southwest Airlines. The airline differentiated itself from other US carriers with customer-friendly policies. They offered as easy ticket changes and refunds without harsh penalty fees years before other airlines adopted the same, and allowed all passengers two checked bags without fees for years after other airlines all moved to charging $50, $75, or more. As of today, that's no longer.



Southwest announced today that the "Bags Fly Free" era is over. They'll still give a free checked baggage allowance to elites and those flying on the most expensive ticket class. That's in line with other US carriers.

This is part of a broader effort to realign Southwest to be just like all the other US airlines. As I noted in December when Southwest announced a move to assigned seating it's nominally in the name of "competitiveness" but really it's removing key differentiators that helped Southwest compete with— and, for decades, be more profitable than— other carriers.

Oh, and along with this change, Southwest also announced a new, lower class of tickets. The old "Wanna Get Away" fare category is being replaced with "Basic". Similar to other carriers' Basic Economy tickets it comes with fewer conveniences than ever before. These tickets will not permit changes, standby, or transferable credits.

I saw an interesting article in my newsfeed yesterday, "Gen Z Doesn't Know How to Act in Bars." I'm always curious to read the latest in how older generations are scorning the young. And this article was published by Vox, which has a strong reputation for insightful explanatory journalism. Perhaps this article would go beyond superficial scoffing, I thought, and show whether there's really a there there. Well, it did, and it didn't.

First, let me summarize the complaints, according to the article, about how Gen Z acts incorrectly in bars:

• Gen Z closes out their bills each round, instead of leaving a tab open for the evening, making more work for the bartender. Yes, this really is the primary complaint; the article even states that explicitly. ...Which makes me wonder who wrote this, an overworked bartender?


• In a group of Gen Zs, not everybody will order a drink. ...Again, what sources were used for writing this article?


• Gen Z groups are more interested in socializing with the friends they came with than chatting up the bartender. ...Seriously?


• Gen Z groups stay a long time without drinking the whole time. ...Are you sensing a pattern here?

The author shows a moment of self-awareness about the rubbish she's spreading. Before presenting the above complaints she writes:

"Obviously, it’s incredibly satisfying to point out how a person — or, even better, a whole group of people — does something wrong. It’s even more fulfilling to be able to signal a divide, a marker that, for objective scientific reasons, you could never be implicated in this type of chaotic discordance. Look at this worse person — who is nothing like me — move through the universe, incorrectly!"

You could plausibly argue that this foreward to the complaints— which, taken together, all sound like they come from impatient bartenders who wish customers would just pay and get out— invites us to scoff at them and dismiss them. Indeed, for some of us, like me, it does. I love her little passage about thinking ourselves better than others. But in a published work I believe you've got to evaluate the content by its mass. When an essay is 98% complaints and 2% one trenchant little paragraph about how, maybe, the complaints aren't valid, most people— maybe even, say, 98%— are going to take away the 98% as the message.

What's wrong with the complaints in the article, by the way? Here are Five Things. And remember, I'm two generations older than Gen Z.

1. Closing out the bill each round sounds like a store problem, not a customer problem. Seriously, easy and fast payment system exist. Stop being cheapskates and replace your early-2000s technology. Don't tell me you can't afford to upgrade when you sell $1.50 bottles of beer for $10+ each.

2. Yeah, not everybody orders a drink. Deal with it. It was like that 25-30 years ago when I was a regular bar patron, too.

3. Is it because your service sucks? One big reason not everybody among my friends 25-30 years ago ordered drinks was shit service. At a pub I met friends at every week, most stopped ordering food and drink because table service became so erratic. That was one particular establishment, but in general service levels are way weaker today than they were back in the late 1990s.

4. People order fewer drinks because they're expensive. Even as a Gen Xer I order way fewer drinks in bars and food-and-bar establishments now than in the past because they've just so darn expensive. At $10+ for a beer and $15+ for a cocktail I just can't enjoy them much anymore. Plus, if had the weaker finances of a 20-something I certainly wouldn't be downing a lot of $15+ mixed drinks!

5. People linger over drinks. That's how bars have always worked. The thing that's most ridiculous about this article is the bartenders' repeated preference that people just order drinks as long as they're there, then leave. And that's just so many kinds of wrong. To name just two: A, it was never like that. B, do you really expect people to buy a drink and leave— they could buy that $10 beer for $2 at the grocery store if that's all they wanted— or to get soused on multiple rounds of drinks if they stay for a few hours? These bartenders seem like the worst of the doesn't-know-how-to-socialize stereotype typically thrust on Gen Z.

I don't know what's going on with my job this morning. The company has whacked my whole team except for me. My boss and two immediate colleagues are out. There have been no communications about what happens next.

I only know this much because colleagues reach out to me via text message. It looked like their company comms were disabled early this morning. The texts started with a message from my boss at 7:20am.


WTF? I wondered to myself. It sounds like he's quit— or been fired. But there's been no official communication.

I decided rather than send an alarmed response I'd hold off and see if he volunteered more info. Plus it was 7:20am, before my usual start of 8am. One of my two colleagues asked the obviously clarifying question, and our boss confirmed that he's no longer with the company.

Then came this:

It's no joke. It's not a software glitch, either. My boss and the rest of my (small) team have been let go.

At this point I'm wondering what I'm supposed to do. I will repeat, there have been no official communications. I can only surmise that I'll be merged in with the regional team covering the Central US. And whatever team I'm made part of, I hope they bring another colleague my way. Right now there are 4 account execs in the West, and only me left standing as a sales engineer to support them. There's no way, zero, I can cover all that work.

Update: It Gets Worse!

Panama Travelog #9
El Valle, Panama - Mon, 23 Dec 2024. 4pm.

After our tiring 2-hour drive in Panama today we arrived at Hotel Campestre in El Valle, Panama. This area, whose full name is El Valle de Antón, is in the caldera of an ancient volcano. There are mountains all around us.... They are the rim of the ancient volcano we are inside.



Hotel Campestre is a modest lodge about 2km off the town's main road in a lush, green area at the foot of steep mountains. There's a view across the valley to the mountains on the far side, as well (photo above). Unfortunately, as nice as it looks we've encountered another hotel snafu.

The snafu is the hotel doesn't actually have the room we booked available. We booked a king room that would have a large bed (obvs) and a table and a couple of chairs. We're here for 4 nights so having a bit of room to spread out is important. They put us in a two-queen room. The problem with the 2Q configuration is that not only is it smaller bed(s) than we reserved, there is basically no furniture in it other than the 2 beds. Also, we paid more to book the king room.

After tromping upstairs with our bags (there's no elevator here) we tromped back down to complain about the room switcheroo. It turns out all the king rooms are in the process of renovation. They don't have one to give us. Of course, that didn't stop them from selling them on their website. They did show us one king room that's available now... but it reeked of fresh paint. Apparently the renovations aren't quite done, even on that room.

The staff at the hotel were apologetic but refused to do anything different. Hawk demanded a small discount, $20/night, and they refused. Their reason was something like, "Your credit card has already been charged." Like, once they'd collected money they absolutely weren't allowed to let go of it. Nevermind that credit card credits are a routine thing that's existed for decades. 🙄

Ultimately Hawk got them to agree to give us free breakfast in the hotel restaurant for our stay. Nominally that's worth over $20/day, based on menu price, though for us the value is maybe half that as we'd normally be satisfied buying take-away breakfast at one of the many markets in town.

Last week I booked a business trip to LA for today. The plan was I'd fly down to LAX this morning, attend a few meetings nearby, and fly back home this evening. With my Covid bounce and positive test yesterday I decided to pull the plug on that trip out of caution and respect for the people around me.

I am both happy and sad about canceling today's trip. ...Happy, because I enjoyed not having to get up until 7am today. If I had to catch my 7am flight I'd have set my alarm for 4:45a and been up by 5 and out the door by 5:30. ...But also sad, because meeting people in person is one of the things I enjoy about sales. And part of the reason I enjoy it is it's so much more effective than meeting virtually.

I proposed to my account-exec counterpart that we reschedule today's meeting to the first week of January. Yeah, that's 3 weeks away, but what I see across so many of my customers is that most business projects are being paused for the next two weeks. So many people are taking time off around the holidays that only truly critical projects are being worked— that early January is effectively only a delay of 1 week.

But in sales, of course, everything is the #1 absolute most important problem ever. Like, Christmas will be canceled if we don't meet today. So the account exec frantically called my manager for help, and they tapped one of my colleagues to fly down to LA last-minute. The poor guy didn't even know what he was supposed to do— or how to to it. WTF? Really?! It's better to send a warm body today than to wait one virtual week and send the right person? And no, this is not an or-Christmas-is-canceled emergency. In fact it's fairly low priority. So maybe I'll travel to LA in a few weeks anyway to fix what doesn't get done right today. 🙄

A few weeks ago I blogged "Sure, Cancel my 7am Meeting... at 7:05am" about, well, the title. It happened again today.

We had a 7am meeting, a customer presentation, which I was asked to attend as of yesterday afternoon because, apparently, it's super important. So again, today, I woke up early to get camera-ready to present at an early meeting.

A few minutes after 7 the first customer joined. He was calling in, while traveling—so he was unable to see any of the presentation and demo. And then he informed us that the whole rest of his team was called away to fix an urgent problem on their side. He urged us to give the demo anyway, using the meeting as a recording the rest of his team could watch later.

Thankfully my teammate who's taking the technical lead on this project put his foot down on that request. It would be stupid to create a recording of a customized demo for people to watch, whenever, maybe, if they remember, if they feel like it. Instead the demo should include the right stakeholders, interactively, so we can ensure their concerns are addressed and validate their feedback.

While my colleague was negotiating with the customer at 7:10am about when/how to reschedule the call I was already blowing up my boss's Slack with messages about how this is getting ridiculous. This is now the second time this has happened— with the same customer. And not only that, but our regional sales VP for some reason decided this meeting was so important that we had 4 people from my functional team (sales engineers) attending... plus a VP engineering from our product org. From a staffing perspective this was a super expensive meeting for my company. A super expensive meeting with zero value because the customer is not committed. We're throwing the whole varsity team at them to win the sales, while I believe they're just tire kickers.

I wish there were a penalty box I was allowed to put customers in for blowing off meetings. Like, if you demand a meeting that's outside my normal work hours, and I agree to accommodate because I'm working with you in good faith, and then you leave me standing there alone only to cancel 5-10 minutes after it started, you don't get to do that again. You can have your next meeting at a time that's convenient for me. And if you abuse my good will twice, you definitely don't deserve further good will from me.

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way in most places in sales. Most managers in sales are completely spineless in front of customers. Customers abuse us and then whine we're dragging our feet to serve them? Management amplifies their concerns because, gasp, they might pay us money in the future. Except tire-kickers are not likely to do that.

It's sad that so many sales managers are spineless because having a spine in this situation is literally one of their important jobs. Sales managers are supposed to ensure their team is putting effort in the right places to maximize revenue subject to the real-world constraint that there isn't time to do everything for everybody. A sales manager who thinks that staff time just grows on trees is counterproductive to sales.

Bonus meeting dipshittery: at 11:23am today a customer messaged us, "Is this meeting still going on?"... for a meeting that started at 11am. Several of us from my company were on the call. We gave up at 11:15 after all customer invitees no-showed. It's like, dude, we're not going to sit around for 23 minutes in a 30 minute call just in case you mosey in at the end.

It's in the news today that members of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah were targeted in a coordinated attack using exploding pagers. Yes, pagers, the small devices a lot of people clipped to their belts or put in their pockets back in the 1980s and early 90s to display phone numbers or extremely short messages from people who called. As of this evening (US time) it's reported that 9 people died and nearly 3,000 were injured.

When I saw an early version of the story this morning my immediate reaction was to chuckle— in disbelief. The idea of an exploding pager sounded ridiculous... and also a bit quaint. It reminded me of the story that the CIA in the 1960s tried to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. It's debatable that attack even occurred. I mean, exploding cigars where a joke decades ago.  I remember seeing ads in the back pages of magazines aimed at kids for mail-order novelties such as exploding cigars, joy buzzers, and spicy bubblegum.

But this attack actually happened. And it's not a novelty toy.

It got me thinking right away: whoever is responsible for this— Lebanon and Iran point their fingers squarely at Israel— put a lot of planning into this. They would have had to compromise the supply chain all the way back to manufacturing. I mean, it's not like standard pagers come preloaded with explosives that a simple computer hacker could trigger. When Hezbollah ordered thousands of pagers some months ago, the responsible party would have had to 1) find out about the order, 2) design an exploding mechanism, and 3) infiltrate/take over the manufacture to insert the explosive and trigger, before 4) the thousands of pagers are shipped. Subsequent reporting says that the pagers were manufactured by a European company licensed by a Taiwanese electronics brand.

BTW, why were thousands of Hezbollah members using pagers? It's reported that back in February the terrorist group's leaders urged its members to stop using cell phones for communication as it believe Israeli intelligence could track their phones. That's also part of why Israel is suspected of responsibility for the exploding pager plot.

Among the casualties were a few members of foreign governments, including Iran's ambassador to Lebanon. Speaking of pointing fingers at who's involved in what.... Of course, it's no mystery to anyone who pays attention to Middle East politics that Iran bankrolls Hezbollah terrorism. It's just an example of someone getting caught with their pants down— I mean, pager in hand.