Long Island: Learning to Trip (And Failing)
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
About a month after rescuing a project and getting its budget quadrupled I was off to Long Island for the first of my many two-week long business trips. These trips will end up becoming the loneliest chunks of time I’ve yet to live through.
I didn’t have a license. I just got my license three years ago. Part laziness, partly no need to get one, but the fact remains that I couldn’t rent a car. So I took a taxicab from JFK to the office out in Long Island, a trip that ended up coming close to a hundred-bucks (with tip) and left me hoping that TAO would reimburse me (for subsequent trips I reserved a town car – much cheaper).
I get to the office and Roger assigns me to a cubicle which was a pleasant break from the roomy office I had back in DC (that was internet-sarcasm, doesn’t always work well). Thankfully, over the past seven years, MH was the only company to put me in a cubicle. When I ended up applying for my second job my requests were “X-dollars per year and an office” (I got a signing bonus, too, though).
I don’t even know what I ended up doing in Long Island. Same shit I’d end up doing in DC except without any friends, honestly. It was pretty obvious having me work on Long Island was Roger’s grand plan to get me to leave TAO to work for MH and I think it goes on the record as being the worst plan of all time. You want to steal a 22-year-old kid who impressed the shit out of you away from his current employer? Truckloads of money. Don’t take him away from his home for weeks at a time and constantly ask him if he’d like to move down here for good. Money. That’s how my second job won me over. I went into TAO to tell them I was leaving, my boss said they’d like to make a counter-offer, I told them what the new job was paying, and my boss said, “Fuck – that’s a lot of money.” That’s all MH had to do.
Anyway, after work one of the guys from MH dropped me off at my hotel – an Extended Stay America. ESA – no bar attached, no pool – nothing. A snack machine. Two blocks away was a Costco and a Hostess outlet (does that make sense – do they even have Hostess outlets?) A couple of blocks further on and you had a diner and a Wendy’s. And that was it. I was done with work by six or so and had nothing to do but go to Wendy’s or the diner for dinner. I couldn’t even go to Costco’s since I didn’t have a membership.
I watched a lot of TV. Ordered Domino’s. Drank a six-pack daily to wash the “two packs of smokes” taste out of my mouth. Called Robin almost every night. She was back in Boston at this point, finishing up her last year of school. I’d call my parents, read a book at the diner. I didn’t have a laptop at this point so that took out the possibility of playing video games or watching DVDs. It was honest-to-shit the most depressing two weeks imaginable. Luckily I have plenty of family and friends in Brooklyn because Friday I hopped on the LIR and spent the weekend having some fun.
Masturbated a lot, obviously. Had to use my imagination, though, since the room didn’t have pay-per-view porn. There wasn’t even a convenience store nearby where I could get a porno mag. Want to know what the definition of pathetic is? Guessing what potential porno phone-line numbers could be so I can have something to spank to. I’ve never called a porno line but here I was dialing 888-123-4CUM because it could have been one.
It was sad. Sad, sad, sad.
I didn’t know the rules of reimbursement – if I was going to be paid back for cab rides. First business trip and all, you get worried, you know? So I just stayed in that hotel room and watched Seinfeld reruns.
I took baths. I’m not a bath guy. I’ll take a cold one on occasion if it’s wicked hot out but here I was, in an Extended Stay America, taking a bath to pass the time.
No bubbles. Just bath water.
One time I go to the ATM outside of the Wendy’s. The girl in front of me leaves her card in the machine. I get so excited; I think this is my chance to make a friend. I take her card out and flag her down. Give her the card and tell her she left it in the machine, try to let her know I’m a nice guy.
“You didn’t take any money out, right?”
“What? No!”
“You know they got cameras on there and they’ll find you?”
“I didn’t take any money out!”
“Better not.”
She storms off. I get a chicken sandwich from Wendy’s.
That’s it. Two weeks out of every month. No-one at GH got really friendly with me; they didn’t understand why I was there. I wasn’t an employee and all Roger did was say how great I was. I didn’t understand why I was there. My second trip down there they invited me to join their Wallyball league. I’m a decent Volleyball player but the whole time playing Walleyball consisted of me fucking up and my team rolling their eyes.
A couple of months into it all Roger suggested I stay down in Long Island full-time. Thankfully my boss stuck up for me on that one. I swear, I was ready to leave my job, fuck the bonuses and the raises.
Thank God for James coming on-board. That’s when Long Island got a little more fun. That’s when we discovered how to make money on these business trips, too. Fuck it, if we were going to get shipped out to LI every month we might as well make some paper doing it, right?
I didn’t have a license. I just got my license three years ago. Part laziness, partly no need to get one, but the fact remains that I couldn’t rent a car. So I took a taxicab from JFK to the office out in Long Island, a trip that ended up coming close to a hundred-bucks (with tip) and left me hoping that TAO would reimburse me (for subsequent trips I reserved a town car – much cheaper).
I get to the office and Roger assigns me to a cubicle which was a pleasant break from the roomy office I had back in DC (that was internet-sarcasm, doesn’t always work well). Thankfully, over the past seven years, MH was the only company to put me in a cubicle. When I ended up applying for my second job my requests were “X-dollars per year and an office” (I got a signing bonus, too, though).
I don’t even know what I ended up doing in Long Island. Same shit I’d end up doing in DC except without any friends, honestly. It was pretty obvious having me work on Long Island was Roger’s grand plan to get me to leave TAO to work for MH and I think it goes on the record as being the worst plan of all time. You want to steal a 22-year-old kid who impressed the shit out of you away from his current employer? Truckloads of money. Don’t take him away from his home for weeks at a time and constantly ask him if he’d like to move down here for good. Money. That’s how my second job won me over. I went into TAO to tell them I was leaving, my boss said they’d like to make a counter-offer, I told them what the new job was paying, and my boss said, “Fuck – that’s a lot of money.” That’s all MH had to do.
Anyway, after work one of the guys from MH dropped me off at my hotel – an Extended Stay America. ESA – no bar attached, no pool – nothing. A snack machine. Two blocks away was a Costco and a Hostess outlet (does that make sense – do they even have Hostess outlets?) A couple of blocks further on and you had a diner and a Wendy’s. And that was it. I was done with work by six or so and had nothing to do but go to Wendy’s or the diner for dinner. I couldn’t even go to Costco’s since I didn’t have a membership.
I watched a lot of TV. Ordered Domino’s. Drank a six-pack daily to wash the “two packs of smokes” taste out of my mouth. Called Robin almost every night. She was back in Boston at this point, finishing up her last year of school. I’d call my parents, read a book at the diner. I didn’t have a laptop at this point so that took out the possibility of playing video games or watching DVDs. It was honest-to-shit the most depressing two weeks imaginable. Luckily I have plenty of family and friends in Brooklyn because Friday I hopped on the LIR and spent the weekend having some fun.
Masturbated a lot, obviously. Had to use my imagination, though, since the room didn’t have pay-per-view porn. There wasn’t even a convenience store nearby where I could get a porno mag. Want to know what the definition of pathetic is? Guessing what potential porno phone-line numbers could be so I can have something to spank to. I’ve never called a porno line but here I was dialing 888-123-4CUM because it could have been one.
It was sad. Sad, sad, sad.
I didn’t know the rules of reimbursement – if I was going to be paid back for cab rides. First business trip and all, you get worried, you know? So I just stayed in that hotel room and watched Seinfeld reruns.
I took baths. I’m not a bath guy. I’ll take a cold one on occasion if it’s wicked hot out but here I was, in an Extended Stay America, taking a bath to pass the time.
No bubbles. Just bath water.
One time I go to the ATM outside of the Wendy’s. The girl in front of me leaves her card in the machine. I get so excited; I think this is my chance to make a friend. I take her card out and flag her down. Give her the card and tell her she left it in the machine, try to let her know I’m a nice guy.
“You didn’t take any money out, right?”
“What? No!”
“You know they got cameras on there and they’ll find you?”
“I didn’t take any money out!”
“Better not.”
She storms off. I get a chicken sandwich from Wendy’s.
That’s it. Two weeks out of every month. No-one at GH got really friendly with me; they didn’t understand why I was there. I wasn’t an employee and all Roger did was say how great I was. I didn’t understand why I was there. My second trip down there they invited me to join their Wallyball league. I’m a decent Volleyball player but the whole time playing Walleyball consisted of me fucking up and my team rolling their eyes.
A couple of months into it all Roger suggested I stay down in Long Island full-time. Thankfully my boss stuck up for me on that one. I swear, I was ready to leave my job, fuck the bonuses and the raises.
Thank God for James coming on-board. That’s when Long Island got a little more fun. That’s when we discovered how to make money on these business trips, too. Fuck it, if we were going to get shipped out to LI every month we might as well make some paper doing it, right?
posted by Jason at
5:08 PM
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