Dining Out

I attended a luncheon yesterday at the Hyatt Town Lake with my business partner. We decided we needed to network more. The event was a room full of advertising types and various branches stemming off of that particular trunk. We exchanged a few business cards and shared abbreviated conversations with others sitting at the table but all in all, it was pretty boring. The speaker’s only saving grace was that he was British. What I enjoy most about these sorts of outings, though, has to do with the abundance of nonverbal dynamics that come in to play when participating in a group effort of this nature. Let me illustrate…

People are milling about in the lobby when we arrive so it takes way too much time to figure out which line is check in and when I finally do, I hope I’m not one of the schmucks that has to wear a handwritten version of the stick-on nametag because my credit card transaction didn’t get approved via the net when I registered for this thing. I stick on the paper nameplate and enter the ballroom in search of a table not too obviously in the middle of the room but with decent site lines. I want to be able to both see the speaker and hide if I needed to nap or something. We circle a table and I sit at the seat with the biggest slice of chocolate cake at the top of the place setting. People file in and I secretly vote for and against potential diners at my table. “No, no, no! You can’t sit next to me! Well, crap.” I mutter to myself.

There’s always an uncomfortable moment at each course, not including dessert, when the table can’t decide when to begin eating. When all of salads are down and we begin to graze. I make an effort to not look like a goat eating weeds and keep the teeth clear of green debris while talking to the person on my left. I also hope I don’t spew any food on him as we exchange info about our companies. The first course is quickly devoured and the second arrives and all but one person gets theirs. She must be the vegetarian at the table and we all steal glances at each other mentally urging the other to begin noshing without her veggie whatever. I finally dive in without looking up and the clink of my knife is like a dinner bell. Everyone eats. In the meantime, the featured speaker is at the podium wrestling with his Power Point presentation. He flashes pics of his kid over and over by mistake. I’m waiting for the “British Girls Gone Wild” series to pop up any minute.

The second course plates get cleared and it’s a huge noise of clattering and clinking, the server oblivious to the pauses the speaker keeps making because he can’t even hear himself. You’d think the server was trying to scare off bears or something. I inhale nearly all of my chocolate cake. I try and finish it I but stuffed myself on the previous course that was on a plate bigger than a record album. So much for picking the biggest slice of choco-love-me-and-my-thighs. Naturally, the food coma sets in soon afterwards and all I want to do is undo my pants, kick off my shoes (entirely because I already have them half way off), and grab a disco nap. I hear the speaker ask the group for any questions and out of the corner of my eye I see hands go up. This is the part I despise the most, especially the question askers that say, “Could you please go in to more detail about…?” Somebody hand me a dirty fork.

One of the perks of my job is that my business partner and me communicate via telepathy. After about the 5th “Could you go into more detail about…?’, she looks at me, I look at her, and we both quietly stand up, nod to our new found friends, and waddle off. I rip off the nametag like a band-aid on an open wound and burp.