Two weeks ago, amid my 24 day work-a-thon, I got fed up with the project. I was so stressed out that I just needed a night off. The opportunity presented itself when our Subject Matter Experts (SME's) from Northern Ireland and Germany were in town for system testing.
Roughly 30 of us went out to the local Asian restaurant (the only decent restaurant outside of the hotel within walking distance). I had a few glasses of wine with dinner and when dinner was done, everybody headed back to the hotel bar. I should have kept walking past the hotel and back to my apartment. Instead, I ended up staying up with the late crowd and finally left the hotel for my apartment at 4am, having had more than my share of alcohol.
I skipped my 8am meeting, arriving to work the next day at 8:30am. My colleagues that didn't stay out so late covered the meeting for me (which I have done for others in the past). I was tired. I was hungover. I had SME's leaving that afternoon who I still needed to meet with from whom I needed some vital information. Unfortunately, the only time that they could meet was at 10:30am.
It's hard to explain our location setup . . . we take up so much space in the conference area of the hotel, we now also have some hotel rooms converted into small meeting rooms as well. One of those meeting rooms was open, so I booked it from 8:30am until noon (when my 10:30 meeting was to end). This was a good room, it had a fainting couch. I got up there, locked the door, turned the alarm on my Blackberry to wake me up at 10am and went to sleep.
The alarm went off as planned and I had time to get setup for the meeting. I wasn't as tired, but suddenly, the coffee I had as breakfast was sitting so well in my stomach. I soldiered on, wetting down my hair so it didn't look like I'd just taken a nap in on a sofa in a meeting room.
My colleagues arrived for the meeting and things went well for the first 15 minutes. The coffee in my stomach started making me nauseous again. I excused myself from the meeting, went to the bathroom, vomitted (in a very professional manner might I add - I didn't get any on me) , rinsed my mouth out, then returned to the meeting, picking up where I left off.
Now I know I wasn't the first one to do something like this, nor will I be the last one to do something like this, but I'm embarrassed just the same. It was the first time it has ever happened to me. Mostly I'm glad that people are a little more relaxed about that kind of thing over here in Ireland. I've seen plenty others come in after hard nights on the town. Now I can sympathize with them. Everybody's human, I'm no exception.
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