I was supposed to move to London. But I didn't.
Let me just start out by saying I never really wanted to move to London. Well, I actually really did want to move there, but not under the circumstances such as they were. The company I worked for was headquartered in NYC, but they were going international and I was offered the job of starting up the customer service department in the UK. I was really excited because I was pretty sick of my job and I figured this would be just the change I needed. Also, London is a super rad city. Or so I've ascertained in my few brief visits there. I guess I didn't really take into account the fact that even if I was moving to London I was moving for a job and I'd be doing the same work, just somewhere else. I thought it would be enough to be in London, and I'd figure out the shitty job thing later. I found out about the move about a year before I was scheduled to go and that was definitely what kept me at that company for the extra year. I loved the company, loved the people, HATED the work.
In the months leading up to the move I was hearing various opinions about the move I had planned. My boss and other co-workers would not stop talking about how lucky I was. What a great opportunity this was . How this would never happen at another company. This is all true. I was really lucky to get this shot. I won't argue with that. I also totally fucking deserved this opportunity. I worked my ass off, gave 150% and was really good at my job. I supposed the problem comes when opportunity is confused with compensation. Also troublesome, when people tell you how excited and grateful you should be. Every day. For A YEAR. Some people created entire relationships with me based solely on asking me if I was excited to move to London. "Hey! How long till the move? You ready? Found an apartment yet? I have a friend who lived in London for 3 months 35 years ago. I'll TOTALLY give you their number! How excited are you? You must be SO excited!! Oh my god, if I was your age / single / not totally fucking lame I would SO move to London!!" *Squeal* This is literally the conversation that would happen at me when I would go to get coffee in the morning. Or a snack in the afternoon. Or to go wash my hands. Or in the elevator. Or when I would go to take shots of triple sec in the snack room after my boss left. Usually I didn't even contribute to the conversation. When it first started I would answer and share my hopes, fears, excitements and concerns. Then I realized they weren't actually listening to me. I don't know if they were just looking for a reason to talk to me because I'm hot and awesome, or if they were trying to live vicariously through me, but it was hard to deal with. I virtually stopped eating and drinking in the office just to avoid these conversations. Some people have empty relationships based on sex. Not I. I have empty relationships based on great opportunities. Motherfucker.
I was also hearing some opposing opinions. I'm not sure if you've heard but apparently the dollar's pretty weak, especially in comparison to the pound. The first thing most people said to me when I told them I was moving to the UK was "You'd best be gettin' a raise. A hyuck!" (For some reason I always remember this comment coming from a toothless hick out of Appalachia.) I was regaled with horror stories of the expense of living in London and how my salary would basically have to double in order to maintain any standard of living. These people would convince me that since I was basically giving up my life as I knew it, I should be compensated infinitely more than I deserved. I was, to say the least, confused. When I brought these concerns up to my boss and HR department I was told that it would all be figured out and that I shouldn't worry. Maybe I should stop trusting people and figure stuff out on my own. Hindsight's always 20/20. Motherfucker. (Note: I'm getting sad and nauseous even writing about this shit. I'm so fucking glad there's some Livingston Cellars in the back room. I'm going to need another spritzer to get through this post. Also, I just checked out a girl. I liked her dress. Whatever.)
Since the company was going international this required the creation of a whole new business unit. We need our own little customer service team (me). A new tech team (a couple of dudes). A new marketing team, sales, etc. All of this was to be managed by a GM who was hired in the UK. She came over to the states for six months to learn the business before we moved back to London together. She was my direct boss and she was really great for me when she first started. She got me a raise straightaway and restored a bit of my faith in the whole project. She also quoted me the salary I would be making once I moved to London and it was well more than I had expected. That was cool. One of my really good friends was originally supposed to be moving to London when I did. That made the whole thing a lot more exciting for me. Then he quit. That sucked. I was already really scared, and this shook my confidence further. My boss tried to make me excited after my friend quit, but there was some shit going on in my head that couldn't be undid. A couple of months after my that guy quit they brought Bob on board as the sales the department in the UK. That was totally radical because Bob is my hooomeboy, and I was super pumped that he would be moving too. But when he became a part of the team I couldn't help feeling like I had tricked him into getting involved in something that might be kind of a shitshow. Now, Bob is an adult, and it's pretty conceited of me to think that I had much effect on his decision to join the team and move to London, but I was feeling pretty crazy at the time and this was just another tire on the Springfield Tire Fire of fear and loathing.
As the months and weeks rolled on I made no preparation whatsoever to move to another country. I tried to look for an apartment, but it couldn't really be done from across the Atlantic also I had some serious drinking to do before I left and that was priority #1. I had a vague notion that I would need a work Visa. When I lived in Italy I tried to apply for a work Visa once I got there only to discover that it needed to be taken care of before entering the country. It worked okay in Italy because I just pretended to be the mute cousin of the owner and the plan was that I would scuttle into the back room when we suspected any restaurant patrons of being INS. Basically if we saw anyone wearing a suit and tie enter the restaurant I would put my head down, mumble something incoherent and run for the basement. I'm sure there are some Italian business men who believed that La Darsena restaurant was doing the universe a solid by employing a retarded chick for the summer. At any rate, I didn't think this plan would work at an internet company in the UK, namely because our office in London was on the 345th floor and I didn't think I could make it to the basement in time to avoid La Migra. So I emailed the HR department about getting my Visa. And then I went and talked to them. They were busy ordering lunch so I didn't hear much, and because they weren't stressed I wasn't going to worry about it. Also I was drunk.
My bosses heard my concerns about the fact that it would be really tough to find an apartment without actually being in the city, so they decided to send me to London to attend some conferences, get familiar with the city and scope out some possible areas to in which to live. That was totally rad. In theory. I went to a couple of conferences and talked to some realtors but mostly I was by myself walking around London, which was fucking awesome. I really love that city. At one point in the trip we realized that my hotel room hadn't been paid for in advance and that we would need to put it on a corporate card. My boss was really sketchy about helping me figure this out and at one point it looked like I was going to have to put $2,000 worth of hotel room charges on my own credit card. Which was maxed out. I distinctly remember walking along the Thames thinking "Okay, if I call my mom and get her to wire me $2,050 I can afford the hotel room and maybe I can eat tomorrow." I lost 6 pounds on that trip because I couldn't afford to eat. If these were the problems I was having on a fucking recon mission to London imagine what would happen when I actually moved there. Forget seeds of doubt, doubt had just taken a huge steaming dump in my brain. (Wow, I just really grossed myself out. But I'm not erasing it.) Also when I got back my boss was angry that I had charged food to my room. The 2 meals that I did eat in a week were a source of major stress in my happy little business unit. I think this is when I started to drink at lunch.
Now my departure is just weeks away. At this point Bob and I were starting to get stressed out about all of the stuff that HR and our bosses hadn't figured out, so we kind of formed a two-person ACLU for white kids moving to London. We were still really unsure about how our salaries (and a million other things) were going to work, so we wrote down a list of our concerns, emailed them to our boss and he sat down with us after he'd gone through the list to try and figure everything out. Also joining us was the VP of People who apparently was instrumental in forming the "relocation plan". Here it was: We were to have no Visas. We would go as "consultants" until the HR department had time to figure everything out. We would continue to be paid in US dollars, however the company would pay for our housing which, in a white board diagram, in purple ink, explained in a thick French accent seemed to show we were breaking exactly even to what we were making in the US. (This does make sense considering the dollar is half the value of the pound and half our salaries were going to rent. Or it doesn't make sense. I was probably drunk.) There would be no raises. We hadn't proven ourselves to deserve a raise thus far. This would be reassessed at a later date. The VP of People then went on to discuss that everything else aside, this was going to be "awesome". And the really important thing was that once we got to London we had to make sure to plan a super fun time for him when he came to visit. And then he left. And got on a plane to Japan. Leaving myself, Bob and our two bosses in a room with no air. This line rang in my head for weeks after this meeting: "You're going to be consultants, and we're going to figure it all out, and it'll be AWESOME!" At this point I'd pretty much checked out. You know that scene in Austin Powers when the steam roller is coming towards the guy really slowly, and he just stands there screaming and never gets out of the way? That was me. I was in the great opportunity barrel going over Niagra Falls. Just pass me the sippy cup full of vodka and make sure you don't spill any as you do.
Time, like the shitty asshole that it is, waits for no man. I didn't start packing up my apartment until a week before I left. And by "packing up" I mean throwing everything away. I triaged 60% of my worldly good. When Jan. 4th, departure day, rolled around I had 5 boxes and 5 bags left. No home, no furniture, no nothing. I had a great New Years. My best friend Annie came to New York and I think she was one of the only people who actually said to me "If you don't want to go, you don't have to go." I also think she was one of the only people I told of my fears. She returned to me a lot of the faith I had lost in conversations with my bosses and the snack room carrion. I realized that opportunity is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe this wasn't mine. The day Annie left I went out to dinner with my mom and my brother. I told them how I felt, and my mom agreed with Annie. If I had spoken to only those two women in the days before I left I would never have gotten on the plane. But my brother, as only your motherfucking brother can, urged that I just get on the plane. He echoed what I had been thinking, that if I didn't just get on the plane I would regret it forever. So that's what I did. I got on the mother FUCKING plane.
Okay, speaking of the plane. Always looking to save a buck, the plane tickets our company booked were really weird. We went through Munich to get to London. (Look at a map. That's retarded.) I in fact helped find the tickets and Bob and I thought it was pretty funny. We were actually sort of excited to get a stein in the mother country en route to our new home. Too bad it was 9am when we go there. (The first time.) When we were booking the tickets it didn't seem to matter, but this becomes important later in the story.
Rewind to day of departure. The plane left at like 5pm and I had one of those hangovers that gets worse as the day goes on. I had been staying at Morgan Freeman's house because I'd sold my bed three days prior, so everything felt extra surreal. We took a cab to work, I packed up the rest of my shit, said goodbye to like 4 people and headed back home to "finish packing". (Read: "start packing".) I had been so lazy and reticent in my packing job that I had decided that instead of shipping stuff I would just bring 5 bags to the airport and pay the extra $150 a piece to check them. My brother was at my apartment and I made him wait for FedEx to come pick up all of my boxes so he was totally annoyed with me when I finally left. (Also when I was born, on my 3rd birthday, yesterday, March 13th of '02 and that time I walked in on him when he was hooking up with that chick.) I got to the airport and checked in after paying $300 to get the extra bags on the plane. We had a fun flight to Munich because Bob speaks a lot of German so he was translating a lot of stuff the pilot said. (Even though he also said everything in English.) Munich Airport at 9am may as well have been Louisville, then back on Lufthansa to London.
This is the part of the story that I always tell quickly, in a mumble. It's these minutes of my life that my boss used to throw me under the bus. To make the whole thing my fault. He used these couple of words to pit Bob against me so he wouldn't be totally demoralized and quit. (Or so I believed in my guilt / fear / vodka addled brain.) This brief moment is something I have replayed in my head 1,000 times and can't figure out a way I could have done it better.
When we were in line at customs I was ahead of Bob and was called to the counter first. (Deeeep breath. I'm about to start crying.) I had my passport ready, and just like I had done dozens of times, I walked up to the customs agent and presented myself. He looked at me and asked "What's the purpose of your visit to the UK?" Um. Well. I have no fucking idea. I had had so many conversations with so many different people regarding the purpose of my fucking visit to the UK. I knew I couldn't say business because I would need a Visa for that, right? But I'll be lying if I say I'm going for pleasure. Especially because I want nothing more than to poke my pointer finger and my middle finger into your two eyes, turn around and run right back onto the glorious Lufthansa plane that brought me here. If I'm a consultant, does that mean I'm here on business? And for how long should I be here if I'm a consultant? Why is your head so shiny? Why can't I hear anything? WHY WAS HR ALWAYS ORDERING LUNCH? Fuck.
"I'm here on vacation."
"For how long."
"3 months."
"Are you traveling alone?" And that's why writing this makes me cry. It was bad enough that my fucking bumbling uninformed retardation fucked my chances of getting into the country. I was drowning, and I had just pulled Bob down with me. He was so excited to get to London. And I wasn't. Had I fucked this up subconsciously/on purpose so I would get to go home and had I just fucked Bob's life up while doing so? (This is crazy. Bob: I know you're a grown up, but this is how I felt in the weeks after shit went down.)
The shitshow got good after that. I went on some spiel about being on a sabbatical from work while we investigated possible business opportunities in the UK. I may have shat my pants at this point. I can't really remember. The customs official, who we'll call Pat Sajak, told us to have a seat while he went over our documents. Pat left for a long time. Bob and I shat our pants more, joked around, waited, complained, stressed etc. until he came back. We talked about how any moron could clearly see that we were both dressed in multiple articles of clothing with our company logo on them. Two of my pieces of luggage had the logo. It was like shooting fish in a barrel for UK Immigration. We won the Darwin award over drinks that night, I'm sure. "Can you believe these two homeless looking motherfuckers tried to tell me they were coming to London on vacation? FOR 3 MONTHS? HAHAHA, Americans. If they hadn't destroyed us in the revolution it'd be another prison colony for hippies and rejects just like Austafuckingralia." Then they brought us to baggage claim to pick up all of our bags. We brought our stuff to some back room and they started going through everything. They went through EVERYTHING and took anything that was on paper. Birthday cards, letters, pictures, everything. Then they put all of our stuff back, very poorly. I watched a $400 dress get stuck in the zipper of my suitcase and laughed to myself.
It is now, dear reader, that I will tell you of our temporary home. The Heathrow Airport Detention Center. It looked like the lobby of the DMV. In Hell. If you needed to get you driver's license renewed in Hell, this is what the surroundings would look like. We had to leave all of our stuff outside. They wouldn't let us bring anything in because "Ya neveh know whaaash in that shhtaff." (That's supposed to be a cockney accent. Sorry, Eliza Doolittle.) The attendants at the detention center were the nicest people. They seemed to understand the fact that the protocol they were expected to enforce was stupid, but it had to be enforced nonetheless. They offered us the full array of vending machine fare available. This consisted of the following: Three different types of sandwiches. White bread with cheese and mayonnaise. White bread with cucumbers and mayonnaise. White bread with ham and mayonnaise. Two different types of "crisps". Plain, and I think the other was Mayo and Fried Cod flavor or something. (That should be the next Dorito flavor. I'm calling them.) The beverage assortment consisted of water, PG Tips tea and two types of Starburst brand fruit drinks. Lemon and strawberry, I believe. All of the beverages were served in the little plastic cups you drink floride out of at the dentists' office. Basically one sip of liquid. If you were still thirsty you had to go back up to the little hole in the plexiglass, flag down the chap who was watching the telly at full blast and ask for something else. The PG Tips was the best thing either Bob and I had tasted in all of our lives. The Starburst drinks were the sweetest thing I had ever ingested. And I've downed and entire bottle of Watermelon pucker in a night. I guess that's what comes with a Starburst brand drink. When we first arrived neither of us took part in the sammies because we didn't think we'd be there that long. As the night wore on I managed to eat one of each kind. The cheese one was my fav, but I really liked them all. Bob wanted no part. I think that poor guy really lost some weight on this adventure.
Before he dropped us off at the crib, Pat S. told us that he needed to go talk to his boss to see what was to be done with us, but first we would be interrogated by ourselves. (I don't think he actually used the word "interrogate" but just give me this one little thing.) So this guy pulls me and Bob out of our one room palace to get the real scoop on just what the fuck we were doing in London. I went in first. I think he was expecting me to try and keep lying. But no. Oh nononono. It was time to start playing a little game called "Throw EVERYONE under the bus." I told Pat the whole story. about how I'd tried to get my Visa worked out, how I didn't know how they'd come up with this plan, that I was a blinding alcoholic, how I was scared of thunderstorms and loved to sleep with the windows open. I told him everything. This guy made me feel like and A+, #1 moron. The second to last question he asked me was "So after you quit your job, what are you going to do?" His last question was "So you really thought this plan was going to work?" Whelp, Pat, to be honest I hadn't really thought about it. That's probably the problem here. Can I please buy a fucking vowel now?
After Bob went in he came in to talk to the both of us to tell us that we need to get mug shots and finger prints taken. Bob and I both perked up at the mention of shots, but our excitement waned as we realized our mistake. I really wish I had gotten a copy of my mug shot. I think my picture probably looked like Nick Nolte's mug shot. Bob somehow managed to get his hand in the picture while he was wiping the detention center and shame off of his face. I almost asked for the picture but I think Sajak would have tazered me. He was a total weenie. Then we were escorted back to our palatial estate to await the verdict. He had to go talk to his boss again to find out if were going to be let into the UK or sent back to the US. I frankly think he went to go flog the dolphin at the idea of exercising his massive and impressive immigration power over a couple of American douche bags, but whatever.
There was a phone in the room. We managed to talk to some people back in the States. Our UK boss was in pretty close contact with us, and she even managed to get a lawyer sent down to the airport. We called them, they called us but nothing was going to happen until we heard from Pat and Pat's boss. When the phone would ring it was usually for us, but sometimes it wasn't. When it wasn't for us it sounded like Osama Bin Laden calling to order pizza. I couldn't get the address of his cave right, so I usually just hung up.
The room we were housed in was totally weird. There were only three posters on the wall that didn't involve some list of customs infractions. One was an eagle (a symbol of America, no?), one was a flower and then the other was either a big horn sheep or an elk of some sort (do they have either of those species in the UK? I think they are indigenous to the US. Bob thought so too.) At some point in the proceedings Bob developed an extreme distaste for these posters and started to rant about it. Now, dear readers, many if not all of you know Bob. And you know if his ability to rant. This poster hatred produced some of the best Bobrant I have ever been privy to. Almost equal to when the temperature goes above 65 degrees or when Outback is out of potato soup. All in all Bob was an ideal cell mate. He has an amazing sense of humor and I think it was his presence which makes the whole thing seem funny in retrospect.
Sajak can back about 4 hours later. Or 8 hours. I have no idea. I think we landed at about 11. We got our verdict at about 9pm. We were going home. We had been found to be guilty of trying to pull a fast one on the Queen. Fuck us. We would have to go home, apply for Visas and then come back again once we got them. So the next question was "When do we get to go home?" Well rules state that when you get detained and then sent back you have to travel the exact same route that you came. This means that we had to find a flight that went from London to Munich, Munich to NYC. There was one of those flights. It didn't leave until 9am the next morning. We were staying here over night. Okay, fine. That sucks. Here's what sucks more: there were no beds for us. Apparently there were beds in this detention facility but only the real criminals (aka drug mules, weapon smugglers, terrorists etc.) got to sleep in beds. Corporate pawns with misplaced trust issues had to sleep on metal benches. We weren't even allowed to go get our books or iPods or anything. There were only a few books in the room. The only ones that looked mildly interesting were some shitty mystery book and the Koran. I read the whole mystery book and still had 8 hours to go. The TV came on at about 2am playing the original of the movie Carrie. With no sound. And the grate in front of the screen made it impossible to see the picture. You can imagine the fantasies I had of exploding a certain internet company with my mind. I tried to find a comfortable place to sleep. There was a side room that I kind of made my own. We were the lifers of the detention center so we got first dibs on the best chairs and shit. Nobody else was there for more than a couple of hours. I was pretty pumped about my little room until I discovered that this used to be the smoking lounge and I had most likely contracted contact emphysema by nestling my face into the pleather seat covers. I was in there alone for awhile until Bob woke up and came in to chat and then promptly take a snorecoma on the floor. (I love you Bob. You were very tired and uncomfortable.) So I didn't sleep. I just thought. About my life. And decided that this must be a sign from God, or Jen Savage or whoever is in control out there to make a change in my life. I had decided to quit my job many times. I'd actually got the words out to a superior twice, but those quits never quite stuck. I wasn't really sure this one would either, but the events that had unfolded and would continue to unfold were making it pretty hard to stay at the company with any of my pride intact. Plus, whilst lying awake for 12 hours I'd come up with some pretty radical ideas for food dehydrators and closet organizing implements and was resolved to call up Ron Popeil the minute I got within a PG Tips throw of a telephone. Having a job would just get in the way of my career as a great inventor.
The next morning Bob managed to smooth talk his way into laying hands on a toothbrush and face wash, and I rode on his coat tails in order to do the same. Then we noshed on a healthy breakfast of Starburst syrup and Fish and Chips....chips. Eventually we were escorted out of the DMV, to our stuff and we began to make our way to the plane that would take us home. Little did you know, dear reader, the benefit of being exported from a country. We were shot to the front of the line for our flight. And then we didn't have to take the normal passenger bus that brought all the other sheep to the plane. Oh no. We got our very own van. With a metal cage between us and the driver. It was a beautiful morning to be in a prison van in London. The van ride was pretty fun, and Bob chatted it up with the driver asking him all about how the gear shift configuration works in a van of this sort across the pond. Were things different because the steering mechanism was on the other side? Bob couldn't get enough. I was so amazed at Bob's ability to still wonder about anything at this point. I had given up, and he was still asking questions. He's a far better man than I.
When we got to Munich we were released from the authorities and if we weren't sleeping we were drinking. I crushed a split of 'pagne in Germany. At least I can say I did that. Proud, Mom? After minor crushing we got back on the plane and were homebound.
When we landed we both had 1,000 messages and emails from various member of the company. Apparently lodging had been arranged and we would be staying at one of the okayest hotels in Manhattan. All we wanted was to get back to some semblance of home, shower, eat, sleep and stare at a TV for at least elevendy blue hours. This was not to be. I still can't discern the motives here, but our boss had arranged for a "welcome home" dinner with our friends from work. We weren't going home to sleep. We were going out to dinner. With our boss. No. Fucking. Way. He took us to a fancy steak house and needless to say, without agreeing to it beforehand we all ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. If I hadn't been so tired I would have ordered a Gold Martini with a side of Sergio Rossi sling backs (Wow. I've never sounded more like a gay man in mah life.) I did manage to get a seafood extravaganza tower which made le boss wince, so that made me feel kind of good.
The next morning I woke up and decided I would go take a walk and think about shit. (Not actual POOP, silly.) I walked out the front door of the hotel and lo and behold there was a giant, inflatable rat standing out front surrounded by protesters. The employees of the hotel were protesting unfair and semi-illegal employment practices by the hotel chain. And this was the hotel where my company had chosen to put us up. Par for the motherfucking course. If I indeed needed another sign, here it was. Thanks for sending it over, God Savage.
So there it is. In a long, long, long blog post. I think I still left some shit out. Bob, if you feel that I've missed anything vital please feel free to start your own blog entitled "ThisDrunkBitchFuckedUpMyLifeGood III.blogspot.com" (There are two other with the same title originally penned right around the same time I discovered double bottles of wine.)
Postscript: Okay, in the company's defense, HR did send us an email outlining what were were supposed to say to customs when we arrived in London. Everything was legal, I just didn't read the email. Maybe I deserve the blame for that reason. Neither of us assumed that anything this important would be sent in an email with no follow up. But then who could have known that it was going to be this important? If we had tried to enter the UK at a different time, on a different day, talked to someone other than Sajak things could have been completely different. Who knows. Can't change the past. Just passive-agressively blog about it.
