What Happens at the Sales Conference Stays at the Sales Conference?
I recently posed this questions to one of my coworkers: If you were married would you rather have your husband go to a sales conference or a guys weekend in Vegas? Her answer: unequivocally – guys weekend in Vegas. People are absolutely shameless at our company events. I just had my annual work conference (which is the reason that I have not posted in a while) and it did not fail to deliver. All kinds of shit (literally) went down – even accounting for the fact that 50% of the rumors are probably lies still leaves that other 50% which is true. Let me tell you… corporate America is not as up tight as you would think.
I have been with the same company for a while and we have 2 of these events every year. Each time there are a few “incidents” that make me think “You gotta be fist fucking me – there is no way someone can act like that at WORK”. Most of the time the offenders don’t even get a slap on the wrist from HR. The most that ever happens is that a manager sends out and email before the next conference warning not to “make references about body size or shape” or “don’t move from “friendly” to “familiar”.” we all laugh about it and wonder why managements sends emails to us like we are children… then the events happen and all of those rules are thrown out the window. Here are a few of my favorite “incidents” to give you an idea of what I am talking about:
Pants Shitting
Apparently someone shit their pants at the conference and no, the guilty party was not an infant. Yes, a grown man crapped hisself. I don’t know all of the details of the story but apparently it culminated in the offending party calling one of his coworkers and telling them that they had to leave because he had the continence of a 95 year old man. Unbelievable – the only way I could see this possibly happening is if he gambled and lost trying to let a fart squeeze by. I can’t stress this enough – hold back that gas if there is even a tiny chance that you may let a slider slip out. They may have to include that line in the “warning” email that they send next year.
Infidelity
This goes hand in hand with the Vegas comment that I opened up the post with. I have never seen so many men and women cheat on their spouses as I have at these events. It is like a swingers party except the next week the same chick that got “eiffel tower”-ed the week before sits a cube down from you every other day. Awwwwwwkward! It is almost past the point of shock when I hear the stories – there have been more than 10 different occasions where I have credible knowledge of people fucking around at these events. If my wife ever thought about going to one of these I would shackle her to the radiator until the conference was over. I would sooner have her go to an “ex-boyfriend convention” than to hang out with her colleagues for a few days.
Drunkenness
“Go get me a drink bitch” said the Sales Director to his employee. This happens all the time – people get fucked up and start saying things that they shouldn’t. In a conference in San Francisco that same sales director decided it was a great idea to swing at one of his employees, swear at guys from a competing product and tell our own CEO to “fuck off”. That douche bag is still with the company – unbelievable. In another “incident” one of the executives was wasted and fell down the stairs of the bar we were at. He bit it hard and hurt his leg. A bunch of his underlings quickly surrounded him and led him into a taxi. It looked like when John Hinkley tried to assassinate Reagan and the secret service was dragging him back to the motorcade. That same CEO addressed us the next afternoon at 2PM and made a comment that he felt it was too early in the morning for him to be out on stage. Ummm, dickhead? Its not 7AM… wake the fuck up! The company doesn’t pay you millions a year to act like Snookie on spring break!
Overall Douchiness
There is one guy in my company who thinks it is very appropriate to get “jiggy” with it every fucking time music comes on. His style can be described as seizure-like. Everyone eggs him on though and he seems to enjoy himself. I guess it is a source of entertainment but when I see someone grind on the humpbacked freak from the Marketing department it makes me want to gouge my eyes out.
“Euro Activity”
One last thing that I noticed at these events is that if you are a European at a US company you can pretty much get away with anything and it is blamed on their “Euro-ness”. At the formal cocktail hour everyone was wearing slacks and suit jackets and some guy from Italy has jeans, a t-shirt and some expensive Italian shoes on and everyone is cool with it. If one of the French reps would have lit up a smoke in one of the training sessions I don’t think anyone would have given a shit. I need to work for a European company and then I can blame anything I do on being an ugly American – that would be sweet.
Do you have any “incidents” that you care to share with the group?
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