I… am a strange person. To anyone who knows me, this is not new information, but for the rest of you, I want no ambiguity. I’m an oddball, and I am reminded of this on a daily basis. To illustrate this point, I present you with an e-mail exchange I had with the sales manager of the Warwick Seattle Hotel. For those not in the know, the Warwick is an international chain of four and five star hotels that people of, shall we say some import stay at. Exempli gratia: When the prince of Saudi Arabia is coming to town, this place is on his list.
Anyway, this communication began with a cold call he made to my office asking if we ever had any people coming to town that we would put up in a hotel. After giggling a little bit, I told him that most people don’t think our office is nearly important enough to visit with any regularity, and even though I don’t actually know what we do with those few who visit, I very much doubt we provide them with anything more illustrious than a Motel 8. Undaunted, he requested an e-mail address to send a flyer to and asked me to keep their establishment in my thoughts. Now, my e-mail I could easily provide. My thoughts, however, are limited. So, after his e-mail arrived, I paid no more mind to it until about a week later, when I got this:
“Panda-
Great to speak with you last week on the phone. Just checking to see if you received the e-mail that I sent to you with the attachments? I just wanted to check and see if you have any questions or if you passed it to someone who might. Hope all is well in your world. Let me know if you and your company may have any future hotel needs.”
Now, I typically feel obligated to respond to these sorts of things out of some professional business reflex I’ve somehow picked up. However, some other mysterious force requires me to respond to them like this:
“Yeah, um, I got the e-mail and all its accoutrements just dandy. Everything looks rather posh and also rather outside my personal spending ability, not that that really matters. I did notice the conspicuous absence of any numbers (as in, the bling) though I guess it’s not so posh to include those on a brochure. It’s probably on my mind first and foremost given what I make here, not that it really matters. Again.
That’s how well things go in my world.
Anyway, it doesn’t seem like we have any questions about this sorta thing at the moment. I don’t know how far off it is for the next person to come visit us, and I also don’t know how (or if) we accommodate them when they do, but I’ll see if anyone’s down with y’all th’next time it comes up.
- Panda “This Is Why I’m Not in Sales” Johnson”
Yeah. See what I mean?
As you can tell, I am of two minds about this. I can tell that I am being odd, and that this is more often than not an undesirable trait when in the realm of professionalism. And yet, I also feel as though it is preferable to being drab and stodgy, as I imagine most e-mail communication with this particular fellow is. My personal motivation is to be interesting and lively, but not rude or disrespectful. I suspect that some believe that these are mutually-exclusive goals within this space, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to try to reconcile that perspective with my own anymore. Put another way, I am someone who just refuses to be boring, and by extension, to be bored.
For the curious, his response to that was short and clearly uninterested in addressing my strange personality and vernacular. And y’know what? I’m totally cool with that. My takeaway is that this is why he is the sales manager for a chain of expensive hotels and I am the guy who answers the phone all day at a small office staffed by quiet, mild, and otherwise normal people. I wonder with what frequency my boss wonders how he ended up with me.
My experiences have led me to understand one thing for sure: Culture and society is made up of an incredible hodgepodge of games that people must play in order to get what they want. And I seem compelled, if not somehow required to play them wrong.
…why is that?
Part of it is personal amusement, I admit. However, I think it has more to do with how I find the stoic adherence to routine and repetition to be the single biggest flaw with society’s complex interpersonal systems. I also understand why it’s necessary, and therefore do not seek to disassemble the entire construct and reform it into something more agreeable to me. Rather, I’m the guy pointing at the squeaking gears, echoing the sound it makes with my voice and looking around to see who smiles.
Very few do.
Wouldn’t you know it, all that inspired me thus was playing Age of Conan yesterday. It began with a small thing, just the repeated requests from other players to have me group up with them as I went about doing my own thing. Every time, without any real consideration, I would deny it, my gut saying “Why on earth would I want to do that?” Upon reflection, this is a Strange reaction to have. I mean, this is ostensibly what people play MMO games for. Yet here I am, my immediate reaction firmly set to reject random offers to play in a group.
This, I have realized, is because I play MMOs when I want to play by myself. When I click that icon on my desktop, my head is in a “please leave me alone” space. That is also a handy explanation for why I enjoy Age of Conan to the incredible degree that I do — there is an entire single-player game complimenting the traditional MMO experience that tells your character’s history and ongoing storyline. A band-aid on the issue of MMO storytelling, granted, but I still find it quite effective at doing what other MMOs don’t even try. Personally, it’s exactly what I want out of this game space: MMO mechanics and longevity wrapped in an environment that I can play in completely by myself.
The more I considered it, I came to realize that the converse of this personal phenomenon is also true. I think playing single-player games, especially those with complex story arcs and dense gameplay, is much more fulfilling with others present. However the logistics work out, the experience (dare I say “emergent game-playing”?) is unlike anything that an intentionally multiplayer game has ever given me. I wish I knew of one, or had an idea on how to make one, or even just how to convey how much it would mean to me to have something something deliberately designed to be that way. Perhaps I am alone in this feeling, and such a thing should therefore never exist. And y’know what? I’m totally cool with that.
The point with all this is, admittedly, a selfish one. I wish to understand myself, why I’m constantly asking questions that no one else asks, only to get answers that no one else seems to care about. Working this out here has, at least, illuminated one corner of a very broad, dark picture. So, score one for me. As for you, well… I have to ask — have you smiled yet?
