Spent much of last week in San Jose on a business trip. While the work and my co-workers were great, the trip itself was rather painful since my back was still out. Thank goodness JetBlue flies direct; although I appreciated the extra legroom, and the in-seat cable TV dulled my brain pleasantly, the seats really aren’t all that comfortable. But the real pain came to the hotel…
There were a number of problems that combined resulted in me becoming nomadic for the trip: I slept in a different room every night. First, due to an problem with our corporate travel tool, I was booked in the wrong hotel. Luckily it was literally in the same parking lot as where I drove to, so I actually walked there after arriving. Unfortunately it was the ‘cheap’ version of the brand. And it was a smoking room. That’s a sure fire way to get me smoking at the top, but no, the night staff swore they didn’t have any non-smoking rooms available. It was nearly 10pm (really 1am body time), so I gave in for the night.
Lesson learned: I will never, ever stay in a smoking room again. If necessary, I will call local information and call all the major hotels within a 15 min drive to see if any of them have an opening instead. My sweater still smelled after I got home.
The painful part was the bed: horribly hard. In my tired confusion, I prayed that somehow the next night would be better, since the morning staff was desole, desole, and happy to give me a non-smoking room that evening. As you’d expect, the bed was just as bad. The next morning I steeled myself for the argument, knowing they’d try to charge me for leaving early and what-not, don’t you know I’m staying on a corporate rate from a huge customer of your hotel, etc. etc. But happily the morning staff was very pleasant, terribly sorry, and sent me on my way with no extra charges.
The third night was spent 2 miniutes down the road at a hotel that had a pool and a hot tub. Much better. Well, really only a mostly warm tub, but it still helped.
Oh, and the meeting really was great: good food, excellent company, and great teambuilding ideas. Now, afterwards, comes the hard part where we have to actually go do some work and actually execute the ideas! Sigh. Working by yourself (my whole team is remote, at least from me) does get a little lonely sometimes.
While JetBlue supplies a cute little “Buh, bye, red eye” kit, unfortunately it didn’t work for me. Miraculously, however, my daughter and wife very kindly let me sleep in at home until 11am the next morning. Thank you!
