Leaving the City on Someone Else's Tab

I'm going on my first business trip this week. This is important because I have no idea how to handle it and I'm not sure if I can bring up a raise while eating dinner on someone else's credit card. We'll have to see how that plays out. Atlanta International Market and Home Furnishings is this week and it will involve thousands of people trying to sell millions of objects that people don't need neccessarily, but that Americans believe will make their life better.

It fascinates me the way Americans market like no other country. I work i the industry and understand my job is to sell books and publicize them in the best light possible. There's nothing wrong with this, partly because I really love our books and want the company to grow, partly because I'm right out of college and North Carolina and need something to go to for forty hours a week. Maybe that something will even turn into a career. What I can say, now that I'm out of school, is I understand better the need for extensive education. No wonder people shirk back into graduate programs. Who wants to be out here doing this? Underpaid, and tired and still expected to function like a normal twenty-something. My friend T this weekend proudly stated that he's in bed by 10 on most nights and I wish that were me. Instead I'm usually up until closer to midnight writing or reading, trying to keep my mind and hand from falling off, and up again between 6 and 7 a.m. trying to eat, clean, go to the gym or write some more, depending on the flow. I also watch a lot of Friends reruns, but that's about it as far as indulgences go.

So I'm glad to have someone pay me to leave the city and stay in a nice hotel and feed me hopefully decent food for a few days while I make sure their product sounds great. In the end that's what it's about, is what you have to offer and who's buying. We can't control the economy or half the time even our own debt, but we can control how we deal with all of the above by selling ourselves and whatever else we have to offer to the world. I spend almost every day sitting in front of this computer, working the whole time but in the back of my mind trying to figure out ways to make myself look better, ways to "sell" myself into more money, more security or at least some perks. I try and figure out what they're looking for in a new employee, what the customer is looking for in the books we sell, and how to go about and find all of the above with those. It's a long and arduous process and most of hte time leaves me lying awake at night wondering how I'm going to make this month's rent, but at the same time it's a part of living in New York.

No where else, I believe, are jobs in such high demand. No where else are you expected to do menial labor regardless of your education in order to claim a place on this tiny island. People fight for jobs in everything from retail to PR and there are plenty of competitive universities here as well. It impresses me to see someone working on their doctorate by day and cocktail waitressing by night just to "get by". Everyone here is either "getting by" or incredibly rich and can't remember what it felt like to look in the windows of Saks but not let yourself go in. I wonder if that is why New Yorkers have the reputation they do for being a hard, fast people. And I wonder if it's even New Yorkers who actually prove that reputation. For the most part I meet transplants. I meet people from Georgia and New Jersey and even Alaska, from Colorado and Texas and Wisconsin. But rarely do I meet people that say they were born and raised in New York. So maybe what we're seeing is the people who have moved from further away desperately fighting to hold down a job in this place, to understand what's ticking underneath the streets.

Maybe this trip will allow me insight into that, as I watch people literally fight their way into sales of products and visitors try to get the best deal they possibly can before jacking the prices up to retail. The last gift show I worked was like that and I loved it. It was not unlike gambling to me. Gambling meaning spending a ton of money on a booth and furnishings, having all your products out there for the world to see, and betting there would be enough takeers to make it profitable for you.