July 13, 2010

Spray Fan

From an unnamed production office for an undisclosed television show in an address-withheld building in LA where the elevators are shockingly slow...


Last Friday was a particularly annoying day at work.  All the usual annoying things happened, and then I tried to book a flight online.  Maybe I never tried to go somewhere so far (the East Coast) for such a brief period (2 days), but it seemed pretty impossible to wade through Kayak and JetBlue and finally United to get travel times that would actually put me on the ground for the days I needed without flying and being laid over for equally as long.  Once I found my highly specific flights, I entered all my personal and billing information to book them.  I hit Enter.  United told me there was an error.  Then it told me that five more times, and- because I really needed those particular flights, and they were only pulled up on my work computer, and it was Friday afternoon and almost time to go as far away from my desk as I could for as long as I could- it became clear that I was going to have to step back in time and book my flights over the phone.  All was going well with the innocuous-bordering-on-pleasant computer voice system; I had the flights I needed, had listened to all the baggage and cancellation policies, and all I needed to do was enter my frequent flyer number by speaking it aloud.  But the computer couldn't understand me.  It couldn't understand me three times in a row, which meant that I was transferred to a real live person who was real live hard to understand, and I got to start all over again requesting the particular flights and listening to policies and wishing I could throw my phone through the window.  I couldn't.  It's a very strong window.

I did finally get my flight booked, but all of that frustrating back story was to explain why- when I heard that someone was giving free spray tans in the second floor bathroom across the building- I asked no questions other than, "Do I still have time?!" before I ran there.  When I got to the bathroom, there was a small tent-type thing, a woman with a spraying machine, and a girl I kind of know who works down the hall from me who let me borrow her bathing suit top to go with the paper thong I was given to wear as bottoms.  Interestingly, in a mathematical way, they were out of paper bras, but not paper underwear.  A puzzle.  Anyway, I took off all my clothes and put on a hairnet in the handicapped stall, as I felt that getting naked in a public bathroom with the threat of both colleagues and strangers walking in was totally worth it if it meant turning my stupid afternoon into a slightly less stupid, way more tan one.  And I was right.  When I, pretty naked with my eyes closed against the (harmful?) spray, finally got around to asking why exactly this was happening at my place of work and for free, someone said it was because the spray tan company really wanted to get their name out into the world.  Then I asked what the name of their company was three times and no on answered me.  Or it's possible that, with my new found tan awesomeness, I just didn't think that it was important for me to listen. 

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