One of the best perks about working in Sales, is that I get to do fun things with clients and spend other people’s money to do it! A group of us used to take Washington DC clients to a Baltimore Orioles game as a great way to spend time with them and develop better relationships with our clients. OK, come on it’s the Orioles, no one ever really cared about the game – we just drank and had a fun time. Here’s a few highlights from our last trip.
We would go with about ten to fifteen people from different areas and invite about a hundred clients so it was always a big crowd. The last time we went was an absolute disaster; the forecast was calling for a washout, the sky was black and it was a torrential downpour! Rain like that only exists in the movies so I should have known that shenanigans would be on the menu.
We were taking Amtrak for convenience to avoid the airport and also so that we could enjoy the bar car on the way. As we were dodging the downpour on the platform waiting for the train, we saw the train heading down the tracks. I couldn’t wait for the train to arrive to get out of this heavy rain and also to get away from the woman standing next to me. She was on her phone chatting away louder than loud and complaining about the rain as if her holding that phone in her hand instead of an umbrella was the smart thing to do. As the train stopped and the doors opened, the girl in front of us marched up to get in the train still chatting away like a little yenta. As she was gabbing and not paying attention to anything but her conversation, low and behold she didn’t mind the gap and fell in between the train and the platform. It was a combination of the heavy rain, the conversation, but mostly it was the hooker boots she was rocking on the platform. I can see wearing those in a club or on the runway, but on Metro North in a rainstorm? It’s no wonder she fell.
It was like it happened in slow motion in front of me. Boom: the doors open, boom: she’s stepping forward, boom: she’s in between the train and platform, boom: she’s still on the phone screaming “Oh my God, I fell in the tracks, I’m in the tracks.” At this point she landed with a heavy thud on her elbows and her legs were dangling down under the platform – yet she didn’t stop talking or put the phone down! The New Yorker in me did what any normal person would do in the face of commuter roadkill: I started hysterically laughing and lifted my bag and stepped over her to get a seat on the train as she was staring up at me screaming “What the fuck are you doing?” and then back into the phone “Can you believe this guy just stepped over me? I’m in the tracks.”
At this point, the conductor had arrived to see what was going on and help her up and as I was walking to my seat I looked back and realized that my friends hadn’t moved and were staring in disbelief that I had just done that? As the conductor went above and beyond to help that nitwit on her phone, we got seats on the train. We couldn’t stop laughing at how she never missed a beat on her call when we look up and where is the only available seat on the train for her to sit: right across from us. I couldn’t stop laughing and staring because she was soaking wet head to toe and yet she still stayed on that phone for another hour after that giving me dirty looks the whole time.
So we got to Baltimore and the weather wasn’t letting up. Out of a hundred people confirmed, only about nine brave souls showed up. We sat in our empty section since no one showed up and there was a long rain delay. When the game went on, we just drank to make the best of it. As my friend Karen and I were talking, she just freaked out and started screaming at the top of her lungs like a psycho. I didn’t even get the words out of my mouth “What the fuc…” before this rocket flew right in between the two of our heads and hit the seat in back of us. A pop fly that was inches away from clocking one of us in the noggin and neither of us were paying attention! The ball landed with a thunderous boom and the guy in back of us snatched it. We were freaking out as everyone laughed their asses off and then the guy wouldn’t give us the ball. I was like “dude, that almost hit us in the head!” and he was like “dude, if you were paying attention instead of gabbing, you would have gotten it.” Forget being on TV, if that hit us we would have been hospitalized or dead…
After the game, we tried to make our way through the crowd and out of there. If you’ve ever been to a baseball game, you know that the crowds are crazy and mostly drunk and it takes forever to get out of the stadium. I was walking with Amy, a colleague I’d just met earlier that day, and my impatience took over. I’m not sure exactly what came over me, but I knew that this crowd just wasn’t doing it for me. I linked arms with her and leaned in close so we were face to face and asked “How fast can you go?” “What are you talking about?” she asked and looked very confused and not expecting me to start shouting at the top of my lungs: “GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! SHE JUST SHIT HER PANTS!!!” and I started pulling her fast through the mass of people. It was as if the crowd parted like the Red Sea and I just kept shouting “SHE SHIT HER PANTS – GET OUT OF THE WAY” and people were moving like hotcakes to get away from us. She tried to pull her arm away and was pissed “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy – stop pulling me” “You wanna stay here instead?” as we looked at people staring at us and then I started screaming again.
Some drunk guy tried to help us and pointed as he shouted “Dude, there’s a bathroom right there, take her in there.” I screamed back “DUDE, SHE SHIT HER PANTS AND SHE’S COVERED – SHE NEEDS A SHOWER” which parted the people ever further away from us. When I tell you that we made it out of that stadium and back to our hotel faster than a speeding bullet, I’m not exaggerating. We had three drinks in the hotel bar by the time the rest of our group got back.
As we were waiting for the others to meet up with us, she was obviously annoyed at me. I thought she was being a little bit ungrateful as I had just gotten us out of the crowd like a streak of lightning, but she was embarrassed. She tried sitting across the bar from me, but it was no use because there was no one else in there. Her phone rang and she started chatting away, and I leapt into action. I ran right over next to her phone and started screaming again “Amy, get your clothes on someone’s at the door!!!” and started hysterical laughing. She was pissed before that, yet this pushed her over. “Come on, It’s my mother. It would be funny if it was my husband, but it’s my mother for god’s sake.” I thought she’d think it was funny, but she absolutely didn’t and you know who thought it was even less funny than Amy? Her mother who started screaming “Where are you? I thought you were at a work event? Why are you undressed? Who is that? Where are you?” and Amy stormed off into the corner trying to explain “Mom, I’m not undressed…he’s an idiot…It is a work thing…”
At this point the bartender was laughing at what I’d just done and I was in the middle of telling him about how we got out of the game so fast when our friends arrived and we were telling them. Amy was pissed at me and didn’t really want to move past this and be friends with me for some reason…She was mad that everyone was laughing at the antics instead of taking her side and a few drinks later she admitted that she thought it was funny too…but she would have thought it was funnier if I did it to Sue instead of her. Needless to say, it was a fun trip and we made the best of it despite the weather and if you’ve learned one lesson from this post it’s this: Don’t wear hooker boots in a rainstorm on a train platform – no good can come from it!
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