The Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the company I used to work for described getting his sales team together at a central location and making plans as “herding cats.” He’d shake his head and say: It’s like herding cats. He was right. Dealing with them as a group was not unlike Romper Room.
Billy, did you remember to check into the hotel? Joe, do you need help using google maps? Where’s Dan, he keeps disappearing, can someone find him?
I worked in marketing, so it was my job to provide the sales team with “support,” which during a bi-annual sales meeting involved a lot of explaining how to download an email attachment, access the Wi-fi in the building, and printing out and explaining things that had already been emailed to them at least 5 times. I got along well with them for the most part and just accepted these meetings would be a frenzied shit show of events and activity for a few days.
One year, for extra fun, someone decided a paintball outing would be part of the scheduled activities during the sales meeting. Because what better idea than to give a bunch of super competitive dudes, some of whom most likely don’t like each other, a bunch of guns and let them go at it? I didn’t have to participate in the actual paintball shooting, but I thought, Ah, what the hell? As we herded the cats and rode a bus to the range while drinking from coolers of beer, I wondered if that was a smart decision.
I got a little nervous during the safety demonstration, realizing that is was possible to really injure someone if you weren’t paying attention. Since the guys regularly weren’t always the best listeners, this seemed cause for concern. During the practice “freestyle” warm-up, most of the group formed an alliance and as far as I could tell, tried to kill the one guy everyone found annoying.
This is going to get ugly…
We then divvied up into teams to play a game, blue team vs. red. Much like the corporate world, it was survival of the fittest as each person tried to take out a member of the opposite team during short, timed sessions. At the end of one of the sessions near the end of the game, one of the sales guys, Rick, for some reason that’s still unclear, decided to shoot me point blank in the lower back/hip area. I believe it was an accident, he was hopped up on adrenaline, saw me and just reacted quickly, without really thinking. But he was standing about 3 feet away from me.
“JESUS, WHAT THE HELL?” I yelled, out of shock and pain. I’d never played paintball before and have a pretty high pain threshold, but getting hit by pellets to me felt like getting pelted with rocks. And getting shot point blank made my body momentarily go numb.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he apologized profusely. He was, but the damage was done, and resulted in a bruise on my hip and lower back roughly the size of a small cantaloupe. Shortly after this, I bowed out to regain feeling in my body and make a beeline to the food before everyone else got there.
I’ve never been hit by a truck before, but when I woke up the next morning, I decided I understood what it must feel like. It hurt to move, and in addition to the largest bruise I’d ever seen on my hip, my legs were covered in bruises the size of softballs. It was a Friday, and the last day of the sales meeting. I dragged myself to work and limped to my desk. The Vice President saw me and asked “How’s it going this morning, you doing alright?”
We had a good working relationship and similar sarcastic views, so I wordlessly lifted the back of my shirt just a bit to reveal the mega-bruise. “Jesus…” He put his hand over his face, lowered and shook his head, and walked away muttering something under his breath. This was his standard reaction to many things that happened there.
Looks like one of your cats escaped the herd and temporarily went batshit crazy, and now the lower half of my body is numb.
But the best possible reaction came from my co-worker Kelly. Kelly was laid back, cool, funny, and Southern as they come. I would never want to mess with her, as I’m sure she knew how to do things like load a gun at top speed and skin a raccoon with her bare hands. I was thankful she liked me. She asked me how everything had gone the night before; I told her the story and showed her the bruise. And in her best Southern drawl, she asked:
“Oh HELL no, girl, you know what I would’ve done?”
“What’s that?,” I asked.
“I would’ve shot him…IN THE NECK,” she said the last part slowly, and with emphasis. I laughed. Then she repeated:
“IN…THE…NECK,” slowly and walked away.
And to this day, I wonder if she was talking about a paintball gun.
Doria's Diary 