On Broadway

So I am out of town on business. I arrived in New York on Sunday night for an Administrator's workshop for our new CRM Program. As I am now responsible for this new [awesome] program, training, setting best practices companywide, and solving user issues, my superior thought it would be best for me to spend my 5-day week here in the Big City.

Day one was an arduous one. Let me just say that my credit card was stolen in Houston one business day before I was supposed to leave...can you say nightmare? Have you ever tried traveling with a temporary ATM card?!?! I didn't even know they still made ATM cards w/o a Visa/Mastercard logo. Well here are the down sides...

1. You can't swipe one of these wreched cards at any terminal.
2. You have to carry cash to buy anything [cash is dirty... I've seen where they put some of those nasty $1 bills]
3. You can't put a hold on your temporary atm card for a hotel room because they can't swipe it!
4. Lastly, there is a daily cash maximum that can be withdrawn from an ATM machine

It seems to me as though these wierdos are out to get us. Can you imagine going to NYC, getting to your hotel on Broadway which costs an estimated $407 a night and having a daily cash maximum of $309 on your temp. ATM card? Well, it's NOT cool let me tell you.

So I get to the Doubletree Time Square and have no way of placing the hold for about $2047 for the week, because some ratbastard has stolen my credit card and gone on a shopping spree at HEB. I have the funds in my account to cover the week at the hotel, but can't access them. It's about 10 p.m. at night; I have to call our VP of Marketing. The only way I can get the authorization for my room is to send him a credit card authorization form by fax, only he does not have a fax machine at his house. He lives in a small town, so he called around, and found a BEst Western with an available fax line. He drives to the Best Western to fax the authorization form and a copy of his driver's license we receive the copies, so he goes back home.

When the Doubletree Rep starts to check me in she realizes that he didn't fax a copy of the card. Well the reservations person didn't tell me that he needed a copy of his card. So I call the VP back and explain the situation to him, a situation that will end with him having to leave his house again to go back to Best Western to refax his credit card. Then another problem! He has a dark gold card, so when he faxed it in it came though almost pitched black. The numbers were illegible. By this time I was totally fed up. I explained to them that I am paying $2000 to stay at their hotel for a week and they need to accommodate me. Needless to say after about another 5 minutes of becoming civilly irate they finally accepted the dark copy of the card.

Well at least my room is, in a word....niiiicee. I have the most incredible view of Broadway from my window. I look out of my bedroom window to see great Beauty and the Beast, and Lion King displays. There are pretty great resturants right in my area. From my living room window I see this huge Sprint bilboard with a humongoginormous cat on a string. These billboards are like 10 times the size of those in Texas. I'd still never want to live here. I had the hardest time trying to sleep with the blinking HSB billboard flashing in my window, and inceasent sirens blaring though the night, and the honking. Oh lord the honking. It's a nice place to visit, and I love that I am totally "in the mix."