Saturday, February 6, 2010

We're open. Suck it up.



"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Neither fire nor blizzard nor closed Starbucks shall prevent the auto show from operating.

Fire at Cobo Hall? We'll just open some doors, air the place out minimally and let everyone back in. (If I suffer from some awful 9/11-esque lung disease by this time next year, I think we'll know who to blame. I'm looking at you, NAIAS.) The Great Blizzard of 2010 dumps two feet of snow overnight? Auto show still open. Starbucks, the lifeline of all auto show employees, shuts down because of the weather? Too bad. Get your butt into your cute little outfit and trudge over to your display.

It makes economic sense to keep the show open, actually. Everything is already paid for: the convention center space, the product specialists (most of whom are paid anyway if something closes the show out of their control), the hotel rooms, the transport of all the cars, the PR, everything. By staying open they hope to get at least a couple of folks hardy (or crazy) enough to brave the weather and collect their entry fees. By closing they just flat out lose the investment they made in the show for that day.

So we'll be there, bored out of our fcuking minds, waiting for the two or three people an hour to wander through our display. Thank god for smart phones -- we're not supposed to have them out on the show floor, but we desperately need something to entertain us on days like this. Ssshhh!

Even Starbucks is closed, which is super weird (and super annoying) because it is in the lobby of the hotel, and it looked to me like a good 85% of their business came from hotel guests. Dunkin' Donuts is still open though, and I've rediscovered how good -- and cheap -- their coffee is. So have all the homeless/crazy/both people in a 5-block radius judging from all the incoherent yelling going on inside.

All I really want to do is run outside and make snow angels in the middle of this great city street on which none of these beautiful sparkly new cars are driving.

(The Postal Service is shut down in this city, by the way. The same post office whose creed says they will deliver mail even in the face of nuclear winter has suspended service here. But we're still at the auto show! Please come visit us! I'm begging you!)

3 comments:

  1. Look at the bright side: at least you won't get hit on as often. I can't think of many jobs that are better than getting paid huge sums of money to stand around doing nothing without having anyone to bother you.

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  2. What exactly are these huge sums of money you speak of? It's the auto show, not a Versace photo shoot. : )

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  3. Wow. That's crazy. Hope you have some fun anyway...

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