At 2AM, I was woken by a high-pitched noise that kept incessantly going off, until I realised it wasn't going to stop, so I got out of bed to check it out. Turns out it was a fire alarm, so I got myself dressed (this unfortunately wasn't my first middle-of-the-night hotel evacuation, so I know not to go outside without shoes and a coat) and made my way out of the hotel. Almost just as I was outside however, they shut off the alarms and told us to go back in, so it certainly wasn't going to be easy to get back to sleep!
A few hours later I was up, showered, and ready for my morning pick-up to go in to the office. We were back in the Q Center and in the meeting room, where I found that my boss was feeling quite ill, having eaten something the night before that disagreed with him. He had to excuse himself from presenting a few times, before finally giving up and just going home. A pity that he missed the last day of meetings, but he was so obviously ill that I didn't question it.
We engaged in a few silly strategy exercises and just kept talking through various issues, although mostly I was just counting down the hours until we could escape at 4 PM.
Crazy Lady was absolutely driving me nuts, because when we moved the discussion to research, she kept talking in circles. It was just ridiculously obvious that she didn't understand what was being talked about at all, and hence was getting more and more panicked and acting as though the failure to understand was on our parts, rather than hers. And I realise that's what drives me so nuts about this entire team, is that I have such little tolerance for dumb and slow people, and my fellow team mates just aren't that smart. Crazy Lady is particularly one who tries to hide her incompetence by talking for the sake of talking, whether or not what she's saying makes any sense at all.
Finally, before I succumbed to the urge to throttle her, I just shut up and sat back, as I had that moment of realisation that I was never going to be able to satisfy her or explain things so that she could wrap her tiny brain around them. Once I just gave up, that actually made things easier.
Then, as a final exercise, our Team Leader asked us all to say one thing we'd like to learn from everybody else. I couldn't believe it when the Lady from India instantly piped up with, "And once piece of constructive feedback? Because I've got a few ideas for everyone..." Thankfully, our Team Leader is one of the few guys on the team I have some respect for, and he immediately put the kibosh on that idea, saying he wanted this all to be positive. I was mostly dumbfounded that the Lady from India thought it was a great idea to go around telling everyone what she thought was wrong with them.
Admittedly, I struggled to come up with things for Crazy Lady and the Lady from India, but listed to everyone else's BS and built on that. When it came to me, everyone mostly said they wanted to learn about the incredible grasp I had on tons of data (sorry folks, but mostly that's just due to the fact that I'm smart and can keep lots of info in my head, I have no idea how to write it all out for you). Yet, I was surprised because I'd sworn to myself that I was going to spend this entire trip trying to avoid any talk about my personal life, and just asking other people questions about theirs. After all, I don't need my co-workers to realise that I'm a member of a private members club and that I play polo. So you can imagine my shock when a couple of people said that what they wanted to learn from me was "How to have more fun outside of work", as they'd all been amused and amazed by my stories of what I did outside the office. And to think I'd been holding back! (Probably mostly due to funny stories I'd been telling about my running club in the car on the way home the night before, which had everyone in gales of laughter. I'm too much of a ham, and can't resist the opportunity to make people laugh).
Finally they released us, I got a ride back to the hotel, and then set out in search of dinner. With none of the restaurant options totally appealing, I actually ended up going to the grocery store, and just getting some mac and cheese and pumpkin pie. Unfortunately I noticed too late that they had Magic Hat (as I couldn't drink a six-pack all by myself in one night), and so just got some juice, ate dinner in my hotel room, and laughed myself silly watching clips from the Rally for Sanity. Oh how I wish I could have been there!
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