The Pros of ConsIn spite of being nominally an IT professional, it's been an uphill battle against social anxiety - most particularly when involving large groups of people.
Though I've been full-time for nearly two years, I find myself still afflicted by this condition. That, coupled with all of these relatively new emotions can make for a, shall we say, less-than-pleasant experience. A prime example was a security conference I went to last year, here in the local area. During both days of the conference, I spent at least an hour each day out in my car, having a total meltdown. Last week was my second year at that same conference and I've managed to learn a thing or two about why things worked out the way they did last year.
First and foremost, second puberty was working its magic upon the entire range of emotions. Work-related stress had a lot to do with it too. One other thing which was a contributing factor was the sheer breakneck pace of the conference schedule. I don't know if it was intended to retain engagement from people with rather short attention spans or what but it seemed that there was rather little time to breathe in between the sessions, let alone handle other important bodily functions such as answering emails from work.
In fact, I think the pace, above all else, was what broke me last year. I just couldn't keep up and was feeling overwhelmed - the surest path to having a "lady minute" if I ever heard of one!
This year was much better. The work stress was still there but all of the inputs crashing down upon my psyche were much easier to manage this time around. I did find myself having the desire to sit at the less-crowded tables during breakfast and lunch but if engaged in a conversation, I would participate. During lunch the second day, I found myself conversing with two ladies from the banking industry. Like most such conversations these days, it hardly counts as a "Squee moment" but just being there and holding up my end of a three-way conversation without a shred of awkwardness felt like it was at least slightly squee-worthy.
An IT Pro at the Con!Really the only difficulty I had was when trying to go home each night. The venue for the convention charges for parking, handsomely, I might add. The organization hosting the event gave us vouchers that would at least cut the cost in half but still we had to pay. My problem was that upon trying to exit, none of my cards worked for payment. The first night, it was pretty late as I and my Bestie (for whom I had wrangled a pass for the con) were trying to get out and get to where her car was parked. The second day however...
The con was over and with several hundred people all trying to leave at once, you can imagine the insanely long line of cars trying to get out via the single exit gate. After 20 minutes or so, I finally got my turn at the gate and of course, just as it had the previous evening, none of my cards worked...again. This time though, I had at least 20 cars stacked up behind me, each one full of people just trying to get out of there so they could escape the area before traffic reached its usual ludicrous level for a Friday afternoon.
By the time I got to the point of pushing the call button on the gate panel, I was not in a particularly pleasant mood. A man answered and I explained to him that none of my cards were working at the gate.
"Yes sir, did you put in your card with the stripe facing up and to the right?"
Oh no, you didn't... Oh HELL no!
I spoke very carefully and precisely, "First of all, it's ma'am, not sir and second of all, both of my cards came back 'declined'. Now, I'm stuck here with 20 cars behind me full of angry people and this thing isn't working. Now, I don't know what I'm going to do."
I pitched my voice a little higher and spoke a bit faster with the last part, deciding to play up the part of the distraught woman dealing with a machine that wouldn't work. A minute or two later, a rather large guy, plainly inconvenienced by the whole situation, came out and repeatedly tried my card with the parking ticket and had the same result as I did. Horns blared as he then proceeded to grill me about having any other cards or cash, neither of which I had at the time. Finally with an exasperated huff, he ape-walked over to the side of the gate and turned a key in it, raising the arm so I could finally escape that trap and start my weekend.
During that episode in the parking garage, I felt a twinge of guilt at possibly reinforcing a gender stereotype but I was already committed so I just followed through.
