Convention 2003: Day 1

Sloanie dressed in his Monday uniform of yellow polo and black pants, badge on, ready to take on convention 2003. Um, yeah, whatever.

Whew. Woke up around 5:50 today as we were to meet for breakfast around 6:30 (breakfast is catered and the company all eats together so they can have a short meeting afterwards). After a short meeting following breakfast, each employee headed for their assigned area for the day. My assignment, along with Brandon, Mea, Allison, and the guys from I.T., was to work the computer area—explain things and help people that needed help placing orders or doing anything else with our Web site, etc.

Everyone enjoying breakfast, happy and well rested for the most part.

We got there at 7:30 and it didn’t open until 9 so we were pretty much sitting around for a couple hours. Anyways, 9 o’ clock rolled around and I put on a smile and smiled and helped people for the rest of the day. Sorta like being a missionary only people were asking me for help instead of me going around offering it to people who didn’t want it 😉 I don’t think I’ve smiled that much since maybe 광주. I was actually enjoying helping people though, it wasn’t fake at all. It was nice to see the people that we usually help every day and interact with them and see them having fun and enjoying convention. One lady was so appreciative of my help that she gave me a little keychain that she had made a bunch of to give to people. Best part about it—her last name is Focke and it’s printed on the back of the keychain. Geez it’s just a game Focker!

This is where Sloanie has been working for the past few days. This is less than half the computers in our area…

At some point I was recruited to help cut box tops off of boxes full of paper product and move them to different pallets to be moved—yeah, fun for my back after having been standing for 6 or 7 hours. Even more fun was that I had several more hours to stand—since it was the first day and there were no meetings, the computer area was open till 10pm, after which we were again recruited to move boxes. So yes, I wasn’t done until 10:30pm… all day on my feet. Again, reminiscent of the days as a missionary… Except back then I wasn’t per se walking or standing ALL day, and didn’t start the walking until 9:30 or so, while I was up standing and helping people from 7:30am to 10:30 pm with a couple hour breaks for meals in there somewhere.

The result of this—I got to my room at 11pm BEAT, my back pretty stiff and my feet killing me. Even if I had the energy to turn on the computer to update I knew that I didn’t have time since I had to get up at 5am the next day. Hence, this was written on Wednesday, July 16 when I had time and energy 😉