- Those of you who know me realize I get a little antsy when I cant hear the waves breaking and feel the ocean air. I do love cities at night but I have aversion to the days with suits, horns, smog, rushing, dust in my eyes, traffic jams, and the basic vagaries of overpopulated societies. As such you don’t find me in New York City often. But I found a golden opportunity to meet with a lot of people I know and wanted to know all in one fell swoop surrounding an Internet related conference this week, so off I went.
- Getting out of DC region was uneventful. A couple hours later xxxx said “What’s that smell?” and sure enough we were in Jersey. For the rest of Jersey I was singing the Sopranos theme song, with a few of the correct words. (Pause and start the song in your head) Then we hit a NY tunnel, much like a brick wall with nowhere to move for over an hour. So much for going against rush hour traffic.
- We finally checked in to the Grand Hyatt which it turns out employs some of the stupidest, rudest people I have ever met, see below.
- It took a while to understand why the elevators only went to some floors, something I learned about over and over all week by getting in the wrong elevators. Once I got in the suite I found there was no hard wire Internet connection. (I don’t do wireless, PDA, text message, etc.) The man on the phone was kind enough to tell us we could get dialup connection, oy veh. Then I went to the “business office” for a real connection. The first workstation I was using in the empty room didn’t work so I was moving my stuff to the next station over.
- But the crazy B who works there said:
- Sir are you using two workstations, you cant do that.
- Me: But I am just moving over because that one doesn’t work.
- B: Sir if you use two workstations I will have to charge you
- Me: I am just moving over, I will be done in a minute
- B: Sir you cant use two workstations
- Me: Go ahead and charge me I need to get my work done now
- B: Sir don’t raise your voice at me
- Me: You said you had to charge me so I said go ahead and charge me,
- whats the problem
- B: Sir Im calling security if you raise your voice at me
- Me: Lady call security but just leave me alone so I can do my work
- 10 minutes later I heard her talking to security behind my head
- saying “its ok now”, as if she had tamed a wild beast.
- The rest of the week went fantastic meeting-wise, and meeting new
- friends and business associates, etc. And I will leave a big blank
- spot here for you to imagine all night activities with crazy domainers.
- Finally it was over, lots of caffeine, a little sleep, some pizza at
- odd hours, and other good memories.
- But alas it was checkout time which requires the attention of Hyatt
- staff to get my car. I called them with the ticket number but when I
- went down there I didn’t have the actual hard copy. Yet another dense
- Hyatt worker, this time at the car checkout, went ballistic:
- “If you don’t have the ticket we can’t get your car.” Me: “You
- already called your guy to get my car when I called and gave you the
- number, so the car is already on its way”
- Then 15 minutes of her asking for our room numbers over and over,
- writing stuff from my drivers license, screaming about all the
- bureaucracies being caused in her company in relation to managing
- this missing ticket, and how she would get yelled at by someone in
- the future for this problem. At this point I volunteered that it
- might be better than her customer screaming at her presently.
- Finally we were out of there and for a parting shot I informed her
- that since I paid for their most expensive suite all week that I
- really didn’t appreciate her s..t. While I am no big shot she had no
- idea who I was. What if I was Warren Buffet missing his parking
- ticket and using two workstations in their hotel?
- But even at 9PM there was another hour of traffic to get back through
- the same stupid tunnel. So much for waiting out rush hour. Back to
- Jersey smell and then later another huge traffic jam at 1AM in the
- middle of godknowswhereville, and finally back home.
- Overall impression: the whole thing was great, even including most of
- NY other than the minor idiosyncrasies above; evenso I don’t think
- you will see me there again soon.
- PS: Best story I can repeat: In NY I met the father of one of my
- business associates who is a very well respected businessman. He
- was at a big Hollywood event last week. He saw a nametag that said
- “Michael Mann” and ended up walking up to the gentleman and asking
- him if he was the domain guy “Michael Mann”. At that point the famous
- director named Michael Mann looked at him like he was crazy.
- PSS: An associate of director Mann contacted me a few weeks ago about
- buying my identity michaelmann.com. I told them $1 million donated to
- charity of my choosing, but they walked.