You Mean That Wasn't Free?

The year is 1991 and I'm a rookie commercial real estate broker in the Chicago office of Coldwell Banker( Today Coldwell Banker is CB Richard Ellis, the largest commercial real estate company in the U.S.). Commercial real estate was the hot industry for any young guy trying to make his mark in the world. This company did everything first rate. They had the nicest offices, top management, a support staff second to none( each broker got their own assistant) and the financial backing to do anything. Well, the training for their new brokers also fell under the category of 1st class. After a month of being in the office I was sent to Atlanta for 5 days of extensive training  on how Coldwell Banker does business which made them #1.  So I fly down there with a bunch of other rookies from all over the country. There was more testosterone in that training class(including the 2 female brokers in the class) than the locker room of the German Women's Olympic Swim Team. Lot of hot shots. After a 10 hour day of training, we headed back to our hotel room. Not just any hotel room but the Ritz-Carlton of Atlanta. Easily the nicest hotel I ever stayed at which wasn't saying too much because at 23, I hadn't stayed at too many nice hotels. I check in and my roommate is another broker from my Chicago office. Great guy( still friends with him today).Italian guy from New York the same age as me.  This room is super nice. Big bathroom, sofa with coffee table and a little refrigerator filled with drinks, booze, candy and other crap for us to eat.  Both of us had never stayed at a hotel with an Honor Bar  and figured "Hey, it's the Ritz, they really do up the guests bigtime". My roommate and I were making about $800 a month.(not eating really well on that type of income). Well, my buddy and I went at this honor bar like two piranhas who just noticed a really fat guy swimming in the water. I mean by the 2nd night, we cleaned it out. We cleaned it out again by the 4th night. It's the end of the week and we fly back to Chicago with new found knowledge and all the booze, chips and candy we could throw down our throats from that little refrigerated treasure chest. So, Monday morning our branch manager calls us into his office. We sit down and our manager says "So boys, how was last week in Atlanta?" We both said it went well. He then says "How'd you like the Ritz? Did you notice that little refrigrator in the room?"  First thought in my head is "Uh oh! this isn't going to end well" He continues but raising his volume to about a level 9 "You morons! The shit in that mini fridge wasn't free!  You cost the company $450!"  We both were sitting there scared out of our minds and figuring it was our last day at Coldwell Banker. The branch manager then says, "You ever pull a stunt like that on the company dime again and you'll need a long ass shoehorn to get my boot out of your asses! Now get out of my sight!"  We walked out of his office with our tails between our legs and the entire office laughing at us. Today my buddy is a very successful businessman in Los Angeles and I see him once a year at a conference that I go to in San Diego. There isn't one visit that goes by without us bringing that story up and having a good laugh about it.

Gleeks vs. Greeks

It's 1987 and I'm a senior at Ohio State bartending at CHAR-BAR, a popular bar on campus. Great bar. Small, lots of character. Great jukebox. My fraternity house along with a couple others hung out there. Everyone knew each other. The bartenders, waitresses and patrons. The bar was owned by an old guy that was really cheap. By cheap, I mean this guy wouldn't even hire a bouncer. For a college bar! He expected the bartenders to not only make the drinks but also act as security if things got out of hand. There were a few incidents in the 2 years I worked there but nothing too crazy. Except for one incident that I will never forget. It was a Monday night and really quiet at the bar. I hated working Monday nights because it was the one night that was really slow and I knew I wasn't going to making a lot of tip money. It's only me working the bar and one waitress. Well, about 9:30 a group walks in. About 15 guys from a fraternity house who's reputation was that they liked to drink hard and fight harder. I knew most of the guys and felt pretty comfortable around them. About 15 minutes later another group of about 15 guys walk in. I knew them too. They happen to be in the Ohio State Men's Glee Club. Nice guys coming in to unwind after singing practice. You couldn't find two more different groups of guys. Well, one thing led to another and I start to notice some verbal sparring going on between to the two groups. I couldn't make out exactly what was said but I could swear I heard something to the nature of "Tinkerbells" come from the Fraternity guys and "Inbred Neanderthals" come back from the Glee Club. Things are getting tense. The next thing I know it's go time and  a full out brawl breaks out.. There are people throwing punches and chairs at the same time. The one thing that stood out to me was that there was one guy standing right in the middle of the bar and as people ran at him, he took them out with one punch. I mean he was dropping guys like bags of dirt. I look and it’s a guy named Jim, the lead tenor of the Men's Glee Club! He taking out the fraternity fellas like it’s a boxing video game. I jump over the bar and wrap my arms around him. I say "Jim, its Danny you have to calm down!" Jim is in a total frenzy and not knowing it was me, just flug me off him, like a horse swatting a fly off it's behind. I went flying over two tables. In the meantime, the waitress called the police and they came to break it up. I was so shaken up that I think I drank a 1/4 of a bottle of Jack Daniels to calm down and I still had 2 hours left on my shift. After that, all the bartenders told the owner if he didn't hire a bouncer, we'd all quit. He eventually hired a friend of mine who was about 5'7 and probably a bigger wimp than me. Unbelievable! (I'm assuming my friend got the job because he was willing to work for free beer and t shirt). Still, to this day, that night will go down as one of the craziest nights in my life.

Is There A Bathroom On This Bus?

The year is 1997 and I'm in Cincinnati for one of my closest friends bachelor party. My buddy's brother set the entire party up and the first thing we were doing was going to a casino in Rising Sun, Indiana (This place was between Peducah, Kentucky and Hell) and it was supposed to be 45 minutes away. There was a school bus waiting for about 40 of us in front of another buddy's house. Everyone is fired up. Most of the fellas had been drinking for about an hour before this bus arrived. Every man boarding the bus had a beer in their hand with another 6 cases of beer being loaded on.  Off we go.  The bus ride is loud and raucous as to be expected. We're knocking down the beers at a feverish pace. We hit the 45 minute mark and no casino in site. The bus driver tells us another 25 minutes. Yeesh!! Oh well, just more drinking on the bus. Well, about 10 more minutes go by and the bus is dead silent. I mean you could hear a pin drop. Was there a mute button on this party? Did something happen that caused this silence? Yes, something did happen. Everybody's bladder was maxed out. We all had to go to the bathroom. BADLY!!!!!  Looking around you could see anguish on everyone's face. Even my one buddy who could basically drink a lake without it affecting him, was leaning against the bus window in major pain. At one point, I was thinking "If we don't get to this damn casino soon, there's going to be a massive accident on the inside of this bus and someone's not getting their security deposit back!"  Finally the bus pulls into the casino and pulls up curbside by the main entrance. A woman from the casino boards the bus and starts to tell us about the amenities of the casino. Are you kidding me? We have 35 men that are in agony, 5 that have passed out from the pain and this woman is telling us what kind of cheese there is on the bad buffet! All of a sudden our buddy's brother who was in charge of this party gets up and say "SHIT LADY, I GOTTA PEE LIKE RACEHORSE. GET OUT OF MY FUCKIN' WAY!"  He all but shoves her into a nearby seat and runs off the bus. The rest of us follow his lead and get off the bus as fast as we can.  We all survived and had a great time but realize next time we either step up and get a bus with a bathroom or find a casino that is a hell of a lot closer!

Please Secure All Belongings

In today's world of air travel there are so many restrictions on what you can bring on a plane. The size of carry on bag you can bring on the plane, how many carry on bags you can bring on the plane and how many personal items you can bring on a plane.  Soon we'll all need to take a seminar on the proper way to deal with carry on bags on airplanes. This posting is on air travel of mine that happened well before all of these restrictions.  The year is 1993 and I'm a multi line sales rep in the sporting goods industry. I'm representing 5 different sporting good lines and they each have a national sales meeting during the year. This particular sales meeting was being held in San Diego. Meeting went well and I'm on my way back to Chicago. I'm on a flight with my entire Sales Rep Agency which include myself, our rep from Ohio, our rep from Kentucky, our rep from Michigan and the boss of our agency from Michigan. Now the boss of our agency was a real piece of work.  He's about 6'4", loud and extremely fond of himself. The man has been in the sporting goods industry for about 20 years. He has been really successful or should I say his sales reps have made him very successful. This guy never worked. To his credit, he hired great sales reps who busted their humps to be one of the top sales agencies in the country. We made him a lot of money and he took all the credit. On this plane flight as always he was flying 1st Class and we had to fly coach. Not a big deal since we all liked each other and it gave us time to catch up since most of the year we didn't see each other. For whatever reason, the bossman's return flight got screwed up and he had to fly coach with the other peasants. The 4 of us are sitting together having a good time and the boss is sitting on the aisle seat in the row in front of us. Right across from him in the opposite aisle seat is an Asian man. The reason I bring up the fact that the man sitting next to him was Asian was because my boss was also a racist. Not a huge, hood wearing/cross burning racist but none the less a racist. If I had a $1 for every crack he made about me being Jewish, I could have flown 1st class too. Its a long flight and I can tell the bossman is thoroughly irritated with his seat assignment.  We finally land in Chicago and as the plane is coming to a stop the flight attendant says "Please be careful because items may have shifted in the overhead bins"  What happened next I couldn't have scripted better for our entertainment. The Asian fellow gets ups quickly and opens the overhead bin right above my boss. As the bin opens, the Asian man's metal briefcase falls out directly on the bossman's head. Unbelievable!  What made it extremely entertaining for all of us was:

1) The briefcase was one of those super hard silver metal ones, the kind you always see in the movies that James Bond Spy types have.  It was basically an anchor shaped like a briefcase.


 2) Not only did it hit him directly on the top of his head but the briefcase fell on an angle and bossman got nailed by a corner of the briefcase. OUCH!!!!

3) The combination of the Asian man apologizing to the bossman and the pain/irritation of the bossman was priceless.

It took everything for all of us not to just bust out laughing.  Believe me it was hard and when the bossman was out of our site, we all but had to replace our underwear we were laughing so hard.

So an on going theme of a lot of my postings is "What goes around comes around" but I think in this case "What goes up must come down" is more fitting!

Senior Dating

I just returned from Passover dinner at my In-Laws house( Yes, I know Passover starts tomorrow night but for my wife's barely religious family Sunday night worked out better for everyone's schedule) and heard something that I had to share with the world. No, I'm not going to write about food or my eating habits (though I do think Japan could clog up their nuclear plant leaks with some Matzo-clogs ups everything else!). This is about Senior Dating( or what anyone under 50 has to look forward to). My brother-in-law's father is 85 years old, 5' nothing, drinks a ton of vodka and most of his stories(which he tells a lot of) are tales that are taller than him. So, he starts to tell us about his dating.  Yes, I said dating! This guy has more action that men 1/4 his age! He lost his wife about 10 years ago and I think he had a date the day after the funeral. Women from age 60-107 where lining up for him.  Unbelievable! It's supply and demand when it comes to senior dating. The fact of the matter is that there are just more women alive then men.  If you're a man over the age of 70, you're a hot commodity.
            So, this colorful little Casanova tells us about his last date and I just about lost it. He tells us that he's out on a date with a woman he met a week ago. She's 86. I say "Hey, nice a Cougar!" Everyone in the room laughed except him because he was motoring through this story like all of his stories. He says thing are going well. They're at a nice restaurant, they order drinks and so far so good.  As he takes his first sip of Vodka, she says to him "I'm so sorry but you're going to have to take me home"  He says "Why?" She replies, "I'm running out of air. I thought I had more air than I do in my oxygen tank"  HOLY @%#@% MOLY!!!!  Everyone in the room is stunned and I all but fall off the couch laughing. I had to leave the room. My oldest daughter who has a demented sense of humor like her father says "Dad, that's blog material!"   I compose myself and we go on with the Passover dinner. So the hardest thing I had to do was think of a title of this posting.

Titles That Didn't Make the Cut:

1) Is That An Oxygen Tank or Are You Just Happy To See Me?
2) My Dream Date With Darth Vader!
3) I'm Going To Get Another Drink, Do You Need Your Oxygen Tank Refreshed?


So there you have it. In all honesty, the guys my hero.  85 years old and more women than he can handle. We should all be so lucky!

Enough is Enough!!!

I'm on the phone today with one of my most interesting clients. She's an office manage for a mid size law firm in Chicago. The reason I find her so interesting ( and I also honestly like her) is that she has a way about herself like nobody else I know. She's extremely quirky in how she speaks. Very soft spoken but tells me exactly what is on her mind in a very calm manner and she conveys this in the most polite demeanor with perfect use of the English language.  Basically, the love child of Rain Man and Mary Poppins.  So, she's telling me that the lawyers want her to get a gift for the administrative staff of the firm for Staff Appreciation Day and they want it by next Monday. This is not going to be an easy project for me but not impossible. What made it impossible is they wanted a specific umbrella.  I told her I would check to see I could make this happen. After the umbrella company informed me that this project could not be done, I had to call my client. I call here up and say "Elaine, unfortunately, I can't get that umbrella you want in time. Is there another item that would work for you?" Dead Air. Nothing. My client doesn't say a word for about a minute. My sales training tells me to just wait for her to say something. Well, say something she did. All of a sudden, she blurts out "F*ck It!! They're going to get pizza for their gift and when they ask me why, I will tell them that the F*cking Lawyers didn't plan ahead and that's why they're getting F*cking Pizza!!!" 

I'm dead silent and probaby have a bruise on my chin due to it hitting my desk when my mouth just fell open listening to this. I replied, "I'm really sorry I couldn't help you with this Elaine"  She reverts back to Ms. Manners and says in the tone I'm accustomed to "Dan, no worries at all on my end. Thank you for your diligent effort on this and I will contact you when I have another project for you to work on"

She just solidified herself as my MOST interesting client

Sensei Psychopath

Last night, I started a brand new karate class.  Same karate I've always been taking but different location with a new instructor. Always a bit anxious being new to a class and not knowing anyone including the instructor.  As the beginning of class was getting close, students started to show up. Lots of little kids( about 20) and about 10 adults.  I ask this young woman standing near me "How's this class?" She says, "Its a good class, very intense. Have you ever had Sensei Picchotti?"  I said "No".  She says to me "She one of the best instructors but she is really mean", I said "Mean?" She said "Just wait"  So we get into class and this instructor is a women in her 50's about 5'1 and head to toe intense. From the second we lined up for attendance until the end of class, she was on us like white on rice. Yelling, embarassing, barking out instructions and critiques at a machine gun pace. Everytime one of the younger kids talked while she was or didn't put in the effort she demanded, she yelled "Alright, everyone drop and give me 20 push ups!"  This happened about 6 times. At one piont, she kept yelling at a boy named J.P. ,who because whatever he was doing that was making her mad, had us doing all these push ups. I joked to the same young woman I met earlier "I need to find out where this J.P. live so I can kick his ass".  The sensei was standing right behind me when I said that and said, "Mr. Friedman, his father is right next to you, so why don't you ask him" NICE! (anyone have a shoehorn to get my bare foot out of my mouth). Towards the end of the class, Sensei Psychopath has us doing a drill that is nothing short of water boarding at Guantamo Bay. She says "I know this is tough for you older people but try your best"  She walks by me and I say to her "By the way Sensei, I'm one of those older people you were talking about". She responded "Mr. Friedman, I know how old you are and you're in good shape. Nice try, now do the drill" Holy moly!!!
Class ended and Sensei Psychopath walks up to me and says " My class is hard, Mr. Friedman. Hope you can hack it." Never backing down from a challenge (especially a physical challenge) responded "No problem, Sensei. Bring it on"  She then said to as I was walking out "Good, then I know I was too soft on you tonight and will be sure to step it up next week"  GULP!!!!