I spent last night and today at the Century House Hotel in Latham, NY. It was a decent place, with a surprisingly decent and cheap restaurant. Great crisp bacon on the cheeseburger last night.
But that's where the goodness ended. We were ostensibly there to get answers from our federal counterparts about this giant federal initiative called NIMS. In the end, it ended up that the guy ended up taking a bunch of things back to the "home office." Well I could have told him we needed guidance on a conference call. He was very good at taking hard questions and deflecting them back. Just a hint..."That's a great question" always means "I wish you would have been killed by a massive heart attack seconds before you asked that question." There wasn't so much with the answers. And the guy kept calling me a yuppie, because I was wearing a suit. I should have pointed out that there are very few yuppies in state government. And my suit was from K&G, a place that most yuppies wouldn't be caught dead in. I should have punched him.
So I drove with some colleagues 2.5 hours to basically drink some bad coffee, and see an Albany suburb. And the crisp bacon. Maybe it was worth it....mmmm...bacon.
5 comments:
in my mandell presentation training class, they told us you should never answer a question by starting off, "that's a great question." something about sounding condescending and self-righteous... and they're the real deal... they video-taped us and everything. it was my FAVORITE day.
My favorite memory of attending a Fed conference was a few years back, when a gentleman from the Mississippi (I think) Sheriff's Dept. told a room full of homeland security professionals that one of his deputies vouched for the safety of a suspicious powder because “I just tasted it and it don’t taste like anthrax.”
sadly, i think i was with you at that one, but the guy was from kentucky not Mississippi. As it was the trooper from Mississippi that walked through a chemical spill and then had the soles of his boots with the chemical on them melt to the floor mat of his cruiser afterwards. yes, those are memories.....
This is great info to know.
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