Thursday, August 19, 2010

BloggeRhythms 8/19/2010

I'm tired of starting these entry's with comments about there being no news worth blogging about, and I'm sure readers are bored-and-a-half with having to re-read those same words every day. So, when there's no news, I'm not going to type, "There's No Blogworthy News Today." In the future, I'll just keystroke TNBNT and move on.

Since my current theme's been about travel, I'll add another vignette to the list.

A fast growing organization I was with and mentioned before, was opening offices around the country at a very fast pace. To populate them, we promoted and relocated employees willing to move, providing them great opportunity. And in order to bolster skills and proficiency, we emphasized training and networking.

As our employment rolls increased, and new folks joined us quite often, local managers trained and evaluated their personnel frequently, conducting the sessions themselves. As a result, particular subjects concentrated upon most were overhead and expenses, because each office operated under it's own P&L. Performance evaluations and measures of productivity were also significant items when offices themselves were reviewed at the corporate level.

As likely expected, because of our growth pace, it became more difficult to relocate trained personnel. First because many didn't wish to move and second, there were only so many we could afford to transfer at particular skill levels because they were critical to the positions currently held.

Thus, one morning I arrived at a newer office in Los Angeles, to spend a day or two on the road accompanying sales personnel on calls, one of the ways our personnel and managers evaluated each other and developed familiarity.

On this particular day a newly-hired young lady drove me around all afternoon making several stops at prospects and customers, then at six or seven o'clock said something like, "That was my last call for today, so I'll drop you off at your hotel." I told her that would be fine, and off we went.

In a while we arrived in an area that looked somewhat run-down to me. Not knowing LA all that well, I had no idea at all as to where we were. Then the car slowed down to a crawl, but didn't quite stop. And the next thing I knew the young lady told me that the building we were edging past was my hotel, and suggested I get out, open the back door and grab my overnight bag and attache case. I reached in, grabbed my stuff and as soon as I closed the car door, her car squealed away in a cloud of tire smoke.

The place I stayed in that night was so seedy and run down I couldn't believe it. I didn't sleep at all because I was sure that Anthony Perkins was going to show up in his mother's wig with a carving knife like in Psycho, whether I took a shower or not.

But at least they had a complimentary breakfast next morning. There was a pile of cardboard trays of sticky-buns on top of the cigarette machine in the corner near the bullet-proof glass, iron-barred cashier's window. There was no lobby or furniture for guests. The tops of the buns stuck to the bottom of the tray that had rested upon it. And, the coffee came only one way. Pre-poured half-cups fifty percent of which was evaporated milk, in cardboard containers that looked like they'd been used before.

I checked out, went outside, and the same young lady who'd dropped me off the previous night arrived at the front of the hotel on time. Once again, she didn't come to a complete stop, so I trotted along next to her car, opened the passenger door, tossed my luggage in the back, and as I sat down, she peeled off again.

With curiosity driving me crazy, when she slowed down to normal speed I politely asked her who'd made my hotel reservation. She smiled and proudly told me that she had. I asked if she known anything about the place before booking my room. She said "No", she'd selected the place purely because after quite some time on the phone, it was the absolute lowest-priced she could find, and she assured me, she'd really done a lot of research.

Hearing her answer, I asked why she'd gone to all that trouble to find the cheapest place in California. Her reply was that, after all, I was some honcho from corporate and if one of the most important things was P&L, she wasn't about to be responsible for spending the company's money for a visitor to stay the night in some glitzy over-priced palace. She believed she'd handled my accommodations precisely by the corporate book.

I sat back, and smiled to myself, appreciating what she'd done. Because, to this day I'm still not certain of what transpired. Did she sincerley believe she was doing what was expected of her while making my hotel reservation in a neighborhood so bad she'd been afraid to stop her car for two minutes, or was she simply using the "manual" to hoist me on my own corporate petard?

That's it for today folks.

Adios

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