Monday, August 18, 2008

More things learned from my Conference

Southwest rocks when they lose one of your bags. Unsurprisingly,
Delta sucks when they lose your husband.

It is possible to go for a conference for a week and only end up
paying for 3 dinners and 4 lunches. This will confuse your admin no
end when submitting your expense report.

When the admin in charge of booking your travel "forgets" to do so,
you can't always get reservations for the cheap conference hotel. Nor
can you always get the 'cheap' flight option. This is not your fault.
You should not have to pay the difference from what was originally
projected. You will likely have to fight accounting over it though.
But when the difference is almost $800, it's worth the fight!

No matter how many times you tell people you'll be out of work for a
week, reset your voicemail and send an email reminder, someone *will*
be ticked off they didn't know you wouldn't be here to do their
emergency samples.

If you ask nicely and smile a lot, sometimes, *sometimes* the SEM
vendors will let you play with their toys. WOHOO! Geekgasm! Or, as
Brian put it when I got back to the hotel after "Is my little geek
thrilled with getting to play with expensive new geek toys?"... If I
have the chance, I'll post a couple of the SEM's I took.

5 comments:

Suz said...

I went to a weeklong conference and only paid for two lunches - because I wanted to try those particular restaurants.

I can't wait for the next one :)
Also? Continental sucks. I have never flown C in my adult life where something tragic didn't happen (lost luggage, lost flight, three hours waiting on the tarmac). I always get the willies when I have to book C travel.

We aren't allowed to use Southwest for our flights (I don't know why), le sigh.

kate said...

Delta lost Brian?

Heather said...

Suz: I LOVE flying Southwest, and I'm so sorry you guys can't. They've never let me down (and are the only airline that hasn't). And they're less than 5 miles from home and I can park for free...

Mom: They stranded him in Atlanta over the Saturday night. Grrrrrr.
But I got him back late Sunday afternoon. :) And in the long run, it would have been much worse if I'd been the one stranded since I paid an extra $300 for a course on Sunday!

kate said...

Poor Brian and worried Heather...

Anonymous said...

Losing a husband, that takes sheer talent, it really does!

I'm about at the stage where I won't fly, period. Thankfully, that's an option. But I can't believe we give so much money to companies that can't even keep from losing your stuff.

Good luck with accounting.