So last week was a bit of a let down. I have been to Orlando a few times and stayed in bad and good hotels. I have had good and bad service. This past week I got a mix of both. The hotel that I stayed in was a Disney property. The hotel was loud, filled with little kids, and not very happy people. Most of the people staying in the hotel were bright and cheerful in the morning but not loving the world come the end of the day. They all had the look of “just shoot me now. Don’t make me ride the teacups again and I won’t hurl on you”. The staff at the hotel wasn’t much better either.
One of the guys said that it was a little wierd waking up to a bright and cheerful mouse telling you that it was going to be a bright and sunny day in the magic kingdom. His comment was that it was either a cruel joke by someone he reported to or he was at a Disney property again.
I thought that once I got back to Houston, things would be normal again. I went into the office yesterday with the hopes of working out and visiting two customer sites. I got in the office at 6:45 and half my co-workers were there and had been there since 6am. I got sidetracked and only got to visit one customer (all day long) and tried to repair a bad sequence of events that showed me what really bad service was. When I left at 6pm, half the office was still there. Many of them stayed until 9pm. When I got in this morning at 6:45, half the office was there again today. When I left at 6pm, they were still there. Is it me or do the people I work with work long hours.
This begs the question…. is it better to put in the hours or is it better to do what is required to be successful? Yes, I could work three times harder and do some really awsome projects. Yes, I could read another four or five hours of technical manuals a week. Yes, I could get better demos working on my laptop. I just have to ask myself, is it worth it? I would rather read a good novel so that I pay attention to the technical manuals. I would rather spend 30 more minutes at the gym rather than 30 more minutes in front of my laptop. I would rather spend 30 minutes having dinner with my family than really knowing the demo backwards and forwards. In my experience, the really great demo comes from doing it a few hundred times and not customizing what everyone else has done. The demos on my laptop will never be as good as the ones on the demo servers in Austin. I just need to walk through them a few more times and get it down properly.
I’m hoping that at my age, I know what needs to get done and do it right the first time. I think that I did today and only had three things on my to do list at the end of the day. I can wake up early tomorrow and take care of them before driving in to the office again.