On Conferring.

As advertised on TV, I was away from the ol’ homestead for a few days earlier this week while – cue the high pitched scream offstage – at a conference for work.    There were a series of odd little incidents and observations that I’m pretty sure Larry David could quickly turn into a half-decent episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm.   Since the hotel room in which I was staying did not have operational high-speed Internet access, I have been virtually bursting at the seams to share them all week long.

When I arrived at the hotel, I noticed that it was apparently still being constructed, or allegedly improved or something.  This was not difficult to notice because there were all kinds of gigantic bulldozers, erratically placed orange fences and massive piles of dirt sitting next to giant holes (correlation?  hmmm…).  The first significant consequence of this construction was that the hotel had “valet parking only”.  This means that the hotel does not have enough on-site spaces in which to place all of its guests’ vehicles;  accordingly, your friendly innkeeper is prepared to offer you the “option” of  paying a complete stranger $11.95 for the privilege of having him go hide your car somewhere in the surrounding neighbourhood.  I was helpfully informed of this attractive service by a sign near the front entrance of the hotel.  I had plenty of time to read the sign, because there was a ten-minute lineup in the parking lot to simply get near the area where you could actually talk to one of the valets.   When my time in parking limbo was expired and I approached one of the exalted valets, I rolled down my window and asked him what I should do;  he pointed to a spot of open concrete about fifteen feet away and just on the other side of a barrier (which he moved) and said, “Park it here.”  I did, gave him my keys – and paid the hotel $11.95.

I was arriving late for the conference (day one was already finished), and the actual meetings were not being held in the hotel, but rather in the Ontario Science Centre.  Accordingly, I lacked information about where I was to present myself to receive the breakfast that was being provided for me.    Knowing this was going to mean that I would go hungry, I decided to splurge and pre-order the room service breakfast.  This  would kill two birds with one stone, I figured:  not only would I be fed, I’d have to awaken in plenty of time to make it to the sessions.   My breakfast arrived at 7:00 a.m. just as pre-ordained, and I was feeling quite impressed with myself because I was up and had even gathered together some cash to tip the room-service guy with.  So he puts the tray down on the bed and leaves.  I sit on the bed, rest the tray on my knees and start eating my bacon and eggs over easy.   An emergency immediately occurred.  I couldn’t find my toast anywhere.  I cursed the hotel, I cursed the room-service guy and I cursed my rotten fucking luck at getting a toast-less breakfast.  I expounded at length in between muttered profanities about the complete pointlessness of having eggs over easy without any toast;  I even had the phone in hand and was prepared to complain bitterly (even though I’d finished the eggs) for a moment – when I spied an “extra” cloth napkin sitting on the tray, looking awfully suspicious.  Unwrapping the napkin, out dropped two crusty little slices o’ bread. 

The sessions were to start at 9.a.m., so I headed out my door at about 8:25.  I asked the guy at the desk how to get over to the Science Centre.  He told me it was a two-minute drive or a ten-minute walk.  Casting an uncertain eye at the lengthening queue of folk waiting to retrieve their vehicles from the “valet parking” service that had burned me only hours before, I resolved to undertake the ten-minute walk.  I headed out into the crisp November air for a lovely stroll over to the Science Centre.   

Forty minutes later, I crawled into the entrance of the Science Centre and thanked the passing Inuit hunter who, along with his trusty pack of eight plucky Malamutes had bravely saved my life on the frozen tundra of North York.  I  don’t know how fast that front-desk hotel guy walks, but that is NOT a “ten minute walk” unless you have rockets strapped to your feet.  As I was not prepared in advance to use the Wile E. Coyote method of conveyance to the conference, I was stuck with ordinary-people type hoofing it.  Had it not been for the kind intervention of my Inuit saviour, I would probably have been forced to eat the Chilean soccer team that also appeared to be lost with me in the wilds of North York.

Silently cursing the front-desk hotel guy and resolving to consider giving him a thrashing upon my return to the hotel, I headed for presentation room.   The presentation room had its plusses and minuses:  on the one hand, it became reasonably clear to me that none of the hotel staff were continuing to try and assassinate me while I was in the sessions, so it had that “safety from lethal menaces” thing going for it.  On the other hand, there were PowerPoint presentations.   So, kind of a toss-up, all things being considered. 

As usual, my attention wandered often.  On this occasion, I was pleased with myself for swiftly identifying the Nodder among the delegates.  You know the type:  hanging on every word emanating from the speaker’s mouth, the Nodder vigorously and continuously affirms her agreement with a never-ending stream of pronouncements on a wide variety of subjects as they descend upon her from the rostrum.    At this conference, there was no mistaking who the Champion of the Nodders was;  I found myself stealing long and serious glances at the video camera poised atop a table not far from me, recording the proceedings for future generations (no doubt) interested in the minutiae of bureaucratic acronyms and researching the phenomenon of committee membership in a dying civilization.  It seemed to me that I could quite easily get my hands on that camera, re-direct its lens toward the Nodder and soon, all my YouTube friends would have a new favourite clip.    Thankfully, the morning’s learning was interrupted by a coffee break at just the right time;  the urges to misbehave were becoming powerful indeed.

Properly caffeine-fueled and entirely disappointed in my quest for a set of the paper materials distributed on the first day to the other delegates, I returned to the presentation room and sat at another table to reduce the temptation to fool around with the video camera.  I was trying to quietly read my newspaper when one of my fellow delegates – previously a complete stranger to me – sat down at the same table and decided that she and I would have a conversation.    I surprised myself, managing to strike the correct, “not entirely surly”, tone.    Shortly before the presentation resumed, a friend of my new table-mate sat down next to her and they started talking with one another, a development with which I was pleased because I could return to the proper and thorough examination of the sports section that had, to date, been frustratingly elusive.   

The presentations resumed – and my new tablemates WOULD NOT SHUT UP.  Oh, for the love of sweet Christ they prattled on endlessly about – evidently – each and every thought, without exception, that jumped into their minds, no matter how fleetingly.   Now, I’m not a big one for these conferences, but I do think it’s exceedingly freaking rude to sit in the room and blab away while somebody is desperately trying to engage the attention of a hundred or so recalcitrant strangers on  any subject that is of importance to their employment;  all one hundred of these people were and are just as bored as I am on such subjects, and – like me – I know they were desperate for any distraction to give them an excuse not to pay attention to the Five Important Points displayed high overhead on slide number 38 of 6,254.   I think the speaker at these conferences may be roughly the modern equivalent of the Roman gladiator – the delegates at the conference could just as easily be watching some poor bastard with a net and trident fighting a lion.  Sitting in the audience, we’re not really paying attention so much to what is happening – the thrust and parry of attack and defense, or the specific consequences of failing to properly follow the Important Procedure documented on slide 74 – rather, we relatively quickly make a decision whether we like the speaker/gladiator and either start rooting for him to survive the ordeal, or get eaten alive by our fellow wolves.  Either way, what we want is for the thing to be done.   Anyway, I gather my fellow delegates were collectively rooting for the speaker of the moment to get through the thing unscathed and, as a consequence, the stink-eyes, stare-downs and glares that came shooting across the room at my table – THE WHOLE TABLE, not just my two douchebag table-mates – were legion.

The piece de resistance, though, came in the dying moments of the final day of the conference.  The end of these conferences always reminds me a bit of the way Formula One races used to begin:  with a LeMans style start, the drivers outside of their cars and then all at once scrambling across the grid to get into their machines and take off down the straightaway.  Similarly, as the Conference winds down toward its conclusion, the delegates generally become noticeably tense and seem poised to bolt out of their chairs for their vehicles and home at a dead run upon the appointed signal.   The tendency towards this behaviour is exacerbated, it seems to me, in direct proportion to the population density of the area in which the Conference is being held;  the more densely populated and traffic-unfriendly the host city is, the more agitated and intense become the delegates as the closing remarks approach.  Thus did this particular conference – in notoriously gridlocked Metropolitan Toronto – come to a conclusion:  the remaining attendees grimly clenching their jaws, car keys gripped firmly in fists concealed within our already-donned (and buttoned) coats.  Waiting for the final speaker to conclude her presentation, there wasn’t one person in the room who wasn’t watching the hands on the clock in the conference room march inexorably towards four o’clock and traffic armageddon.  Silently, we all – or nearly all of us – rooted the speaker on to a rapid conclusion of her remarks, thinking “If we hurry, we just might be able to get out of here before 3:30 and beat the traffic.”   The speaker, perhaps fearing for her life in the public revolt that would surely result from failure, triumphantly wrapped up her presentation on schedule, and – as one – we all looked at the clock and noted that it was still only 3:25.  Victory was ours!

And then this happened: one of the delegates who had come to my attention ealier in the conference as a “question asker” raised her hand.  The rest of us looked at each other in mute horror – our victory was about to be ripped from our hands with callous disdain.  Was there anything anyone could do? 

No.  The Question Asker asked her question.  As usual, it was prefaced with a two-minute monologue that was a lengthy recitation of her own convoluted and uninteresting Personal Experiences concerning the subject matter of the last talk.  The question, it need hardly be mentioned, was pointless.  The speaker began stammering an answer, glancing at the clock, no doubt noting that it was 3:28 and wondering whether it was possible to provide a complete response and still get people on their way in a timely fashion.  As she was bravely attempting to do so – and this is the part that nearly made my head explode on the spot – a friend of the Question Asker entered the room, rollie-suitcase in hand, coat over her arm, clearly headed for the parking lot in advance of the officially sanctioned time, and the friend leans down and starts whispering something to the Question Asker, no doubt about their mutual departure plans.  The Question Asker then commences a conversation with her friend;  all the while, our brave little gladiator/speaker is in the midst of her answer to the retarded question.  The Speaker was shocked and actually stopped talking for a few seconds while we all sat like suckers staring at, and waiting for, the Question Asker and her friend as they finished their little discussion – whereupon the Speaker resumed giving her answer. 

And then the Question Asker got. up. and. LEFT. while. the. Speaker. was. talking.  Right out the fucking door without so much as a “by your leave”.

The Speaker, halfway through her response to this insipid inquiry, didn’t know what to do, and I don’t blame her.  We were all stunned, and there are no social rules in place that could come close to contemplating a situation like this.  She stammered out the rest of her answer, the clock crossed over the half-past mark, and the rest of us in that room sighed, stood up, looked at one another with blinking incomprehension and, rocked by the sheer brutality of man’s inhumanity to man shambled out of the room without anyone saying a single word to one another to sit in traffic for the rest of our natural lives.