I had a colleague at my last job who used to refer to all business trips as ‘boondoggles’ and would tell me with a wink that we should never let it be known that we enjoy them. Of course, he got to go to meetings in places like England, the Netherlands, and France, and I got to shovel hot petroleum coke in the rain at 3 AM in Lake Charles, LA, so I have a feeling that his enjoyment was a level beyond mine.
I didn’t go anywhere glamorous this past week — just another Chicago exurb — but I have to say it was one of the more enjoyable business trips I’ve had. I met a bunch of very interesting people, got to better know some people I’ll be working with on a regular basis, and was so inundated with food that several days later I am still trying to remember what ‘hungry’ feels like. Not to mention the snacks I brought (I packed them in my shoes so they wouldn’t get crushed):
This particular trip was a seminar that we hold semiannually for sales and marketing folks, and now that the usual organizer is retired, it will be my responsibility (to some extent, anyway — I may have to go to the mat over some of the finer points, like location). Now I finally have a flavor of the massive scope of this undertaking, but to tell you the truth, I am pretty excited that my engineering job includes a segment which can best be described as event planning! Just more confirmation that changing jobs was the best thing I could have done.
And now I have a better idea of what my former colleague meant about not revealing how much fun one has had on such a trip. :)
