TheBanyanTree: Introvert Hell

[Margaret R. Kramer]

This will be my third business trip to Raleigh.  I leave tomorrow afternoon.
And it’s going to be yucky, because I’ll be down there for two weeks.  Sure,
I’m coming back next Friday night and won’t fly back until Sunday afternoon,
but that’s not much of a weekend.  Drop in, say hi to Ray, do the laundry,
and I’m off again for another week.

It’s brain draining travel, too, in the sense that our meetings with the
client will be very intense and detailed and emotional, because we’re about
a year behind on this project.  There are strong personalities on both sides
of the fence and it’s numbing just to keep up with the thought flows.

When I’m home, I can deal with this because I can GO HOME.  I drive to my
house, pull into the driveway and get a warm welcome from my dogs and cats,
and a hot kiss from Ray.  We have dinner and watch baseball on TV.  I read
some.  Then it’s to bed and back to the grind again the next day.

There are no breaks in business travel.  It starts at the airport when we
gather together waiting for our plane.  We rent a car together.  We drive
together to the hotel.  Thank goodness, we all have separate rooms!  We eat
dinner together. We go to breakfast together.  We drive to our office
together.  We meet together.  We eat lunch together . . . and on and on and
on.

There are no breaks for introverts.  I need a lot of alone time to recharge
my batteries, but these meetings are all about people.  An extrovert would
be in second heaven.  Plus, my team lead is Vicki, who I’ve written about
before and has a lot of strange issues of her own, but we get along a lot
better now.  However, she’s still controlling and demanding and everything
has to be her way, so as a passive aggressive, non-confrontational person, I
’ve learned to just let her bulldoze her way through.  Actually, she’s
gradually relinquished some of her control and allowed me into her world.
We play better together in the sandbox now.

However, because of her temperamental nature, she’s been moved into a
different position and another person is taking her place.  He’s a short guy
with what I call the “little man syndrome.”  He’s physically small, so he
feels he has to brag about everything to make himself look bigger.  There
isn’t anything he doesn’t know.  He’s the smartest guy around.  He has the
most expensive house.  His daughter is the next Einstein.  You get the
picture . . .  Listening to him yammer on and on is like listening to
fingernails scraping across a chalk board.  My hands are clenched and ready
to go around his neck whenever he opens his mouth.

Well, Vicki isn’t too thrilled about her change of assignment.  I do believe
“the little man” whined his way into her position, because besides being a
braggart, he’s also a whiner.  He reminds me of the little boy who runs to
his mother about the big boys taunting him at the bus stop instead of trying
to deal with it himself.  So Vicki is breathing fire and practically
blowtorches Scot into cinders whenever she has to deal with him.  He’s
transitioning into her position, so she has to deal with him.  And he has a
way of pushing her buttons, and then she explodes.  It’s awful for me to be
caught in the middle of this, because I have to work with both of them, at
least for a while.  I’ve been trying to help Scot where I can, because Vicki
will never give him all the information he needs to do his job.  To me, the
job is more important than the people, and even though Scot is no prize
himself, the job needs to continue to move forward in our client’s eyes
regardless of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Scot will be with us the first three days this week, and will meet the
people we work with on the fourth morning, and then he’ll fly back.  It’s
driving him nuts not to be down there with us, but he’s so disruptive that
we would not accomplish nothing with the client.  He’s going to do a
presentation when he is in Raleigh, and the client will rake him over the
coals, because they do that in all our presentations, and hopefully, he’ll
get a major reality check on what he’s dealing with and drop this arrogant
“I’m here to save the day” attitude he has.

So besides being in the almost constant company of my coworkers for two
weeks, I’m also going to have to navigate, at least for a few days, a major
battle between two of them, which is agony for a peace and harmony loving
person.

I also dislike travel because I eat too much.  I go to the restaurants with
the best of intentions of eating healthy, but by the time I get to the last
couple days of my trip, I’m eating burgers and fries with the best of them.
I don’t drink alcohol,  so eating is my way of relieving stress.  Downing a
big cheeseburger is like having a cold beer for me.  I can see why some
people gain so much weight when they have heavy travel schedules.  Plus, it’
s sit, sit, sit, and sit.  Sit on the plane, sit in the car, and sit in
meetings.  If I was in charge of meetings, I would build in a little “move
your body break.”  The human body is built to move, not sit.

I didn’t work out the first time I was down there, and I worked out a couple
of times when I was down there in May.  I’m more comfortable now, so I’ll
hit the treadmill early in the morning each day I’m there.  Working out
really helps keep me in balance.

Vicki and I do shop at a Super Target near the hotel.  I buy apples and
strawberries to keep in my room.  I bring a healthy lunch to eat on the
plane.  I make sure I drink lots of water.  I bring magazines and books to
read at night.  I don’t watch any TV while I’m in Raleigh.  It’s a nice
break.  I can check the news on the internet.  We have fast internet service
in our rooms.

This homebody will miss her sweet Ray, her dogs and cats, the grandsons, and
my garden.  My sense of balance will be thrown out of whack for a couple
weeks and it will take me a couple of weeks to get it back.  I’ll get
through it, and I’m sure I’ll learn a few things along the way, heaven help
me.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort.  ~Herm Albright