Luanne Fox Sims - Going the Extra Mile

 

[chuckles] Good. Thank you. After college, all my friends went on to get jobs, while I stayed for years in our university town to hang out in grad school, hit the weekly bar specials and have my parents continue to pay for my car insurance. Sure, I had my part-time job at Lady Foot Locker. [audience laughter] But when I could no longer afford the minimum payments on my credit cards, I knew it was time to make a change. 

 

My friend Bonnie suggested that I apply for an opening in her company. And it seemed like a good opportunity to enter the professional world and have something positive to talk about at my upcoming high school reunion. So, I moved back to my hometown and started a new career selling medical supplies, full of confidence that my master's degree in philosophy had prepared me well for the corporate world. [audience laughter] 

 

Right off the bat, it seemed like a good decision. They hooked me up with a laptop, a flip phone and a company car. I had been in the job for only two weeks when Bonnie asked if I would be willing to drive to Maryland, and take her place in a meeting with some co-workers from across the company and some very important clients. Stay in a hotel. Cinemax. Room service. Yes, I would take this free vacation. My only concern was, I was so new to the company, was I really qualified to represent our district? But Bonnie assured me that all I had to do was show up. I just had to be there. In fact, the last thing she said to me before I left was, "It is impossible for you to screw this up." [audience laughter] 

 

I got down there just fine and had a great night in my private hotel room. But I stayed up until the wee hours watching late-night cable TV, which made it difficult to get ready on time to meet my coworkers in the lobby at 08:00 AM. But I came strolling out of the free hotel buffet at 08:05, feeling pretty good, because 08:05 was the same as 08:00 in my mind. I saw them immediately, waiting for me in a huddle, my medical supply sales executives. When I could see them looking at their watches and sizing me up in my big hair and the suit I had borrowed from my mom, I realized they weren't going to see me as the adorable intellectual rookie as I had hoped. 

 

One of them asked if I had the car. And that's when I found out that I was responsible for driving us all to our client meeting. Because I had keenly observed that they already hated me for being late once, there was no way I was about to tell them that I still had to go up to my hotel room on the seventh floor to get my bags and the car keys. But I was quick on my feet and I suggested that they wait around in front of the hotel and I would go out to the garage and swing around and pick them up in the car. Luckily, they agreed. 

 

The moment they were out of sight, I raced up to my hotel room, frantically packed my stuff, and then paced in front of the elevator, which seemed like it was taking forever. I made my way down, found the car, hid all of my Burger King trash and my CDs, [audience laughter] and finally, I was ready to go get my colleagues. 

 

As I pulled out of the garage, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sign, a very small sign. And it had an arrow. It said, To Lobby. And the arrow was pointing in the opposite direction from the way I was driving. As it turns out, the way I was driving should have had a sign that said, "This direction will take you further and further from the three executives who have now been waiting for you for 15 minutes." It shot me out into a traffic circle, and I was immediately caught up in the vortex of swirling cars. [audience laughter] I couldn't merge, and I was forced off to the right down a one-way street.

 

I'm looking in my rearview mirror at my three executives, who are getting smaller and smaller in the reflection. [audience laughter] I keep making right turns trying to get back to the hotel, but the streets are all weird. And before I know what's happening, I am headed north on I-95. [audience laughter] And the first sign I see says, "Next exit, nine miles." I whimpered out loud in the car and I immediately became drenched in sweat. My whole body was shaking as my mind tried to process the reality of what was happening. And the only thing I could think of to do, the only decision that made any sense, was to keep on driving to Philadelphia. [audience laughter] I would get home, put on some sweatpants, [audience laughter] get some lunch and start putting my résumé out on monster.com. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

But as I kept driving, I thought about the fact that this was a company car [audience laughter] and I'd already sold mine and I didn't have the credit score to get a new one. I thought of my friend Bonnie, who'd gotten me the job and thought it was impossible for me to screw this up. [audience laughter] So, as I hit that first exit, I got off and turned around and headed back toward the hotel. I started doing SAT questions in my head. If I go 85 miles an hour, how quickly can I get back there? If I go 90, how fast can I do it? And then, I started trying to think of what kind of story, what kind of lie can I come up with that's going to explain the fact that I've been gone for so long, getting the car from the back of the hotel. [audience laughter]

 

I made it back, and there they were, my three executives still waiting for me. I braced myself for their wrath as they got into the car. There was a lot of loud sighing and slamming of doors. And then, it got really uncomfortable in the silence as they waited for me to offer an explanation. But the only thing that would come out of my mouth was, "Hey." [audience laughter] There was a lot of tension the rest of the day [audience laughter] and a lot of passive-aggressive behavior aimed in my direction. [audience laughter] But can you believe no one ever asked me why it had taken me 37 minutes to get the car from the back of the hotel? [audience laughter] 

 

Eventually, I got a haircut and my own suit and I learned how to tell time. And by the time our annual meeting came around, I was awarded Sales Associate of the Year for our district. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

But as I walked up through a crowd of my colleagues to accept the award, I noticed there were three executives, who I had only met on one occasion, who were not clapping. [audience laughter] Thank you.