Training Day

My nervous made sure I was up pretty early today. My plan was to leave the house ahead of seven. I got myself cleaned up and reviewed my slides twice. I wouldn’t be using them directly but wanted to make sure I had all the contact correct and the narrative in order. Since I was leaving so early and had to get fuel and some drinks, I figured I’d just get a McBreakfast to save time. All said and done, I was on the road around ten after seven and heading deeper into the southwest. I arrived unreasonably early at the Chatham location. My plan was to be early to scout out where to have the stations and help take down or put up signs. As it turned out, the girl who runs the site had already done that perfectly. She’s pretty awesome at her job. She dropped in some corn and soybean signs for me. At my old research farm I used to keep a larger inventory of signs so could have put up more but I’m sure the new team has tossed them by now. The moral is that I was senselessly early and it was a beautiful day. We worked away quietly in the office briefly before the guests started to arrive.

I winged the intro and had everyone do a meet and greet before we got into the content. For the first section, soybean traits, I figured we’d have a good forty five minutes based on Monday’s performance but it wasn’t me delivering that section so it went much quicker than anticipated. That meant a lot of time for questions and discussion. We had a nice one and got some good intel from their team. I was second on the roster while the person who went first went to go pick up the lunch I’d arranged and paid for already. I talked their ear off about corn and both sections ended up consuming the two hours before lunch. Lunch was pizza from a place called Mike’s Place nearby. BDP claimed all the leftovers before we started eating, I’m not sure if he felt like I had to compensate him for coming or something. After eating he said we could have it, mentioning that was the worst food he’s had from that place, which he once frequented. I guess absence didn’t make his heart grow fonder.

I had him present after lunch and he did a good job outlining what crop protection products our company sells and will be selling soon. I finished things off by talking briefly about seed treatment and then about our digital platform. We had a pretty candid discussion on that as well, they shared their experience which for the most part had been negative. That didn’t spoil the day though, everyone had a good time and apparently they all learned a couple of things. I just about asked them to share two things they’d take away from the meeting but I chickened out. I helped put away the drinks and tidy up before going to check on the plots. I’m going to have a plot tour at this site later in the fall and I wanted to check on things while I was there. Everything looks really good at the site which is especially impressive because her helper has been on the shelf with a freak knee injury suffered outside of work. After checking the plots I got on the road again. I was meeting Tosser for dinner again and had to get back home. Tonight we made a point of going to Swiss Chalet. His colleague from the night before chides him endlessly for his passionate defence of the chicken place. It was really funny to get him going about it and listen to his speech. We had a nice dinner and got to catch up some. I had the clubhouse wrap and fries. He had a chicken dinner. We both ordered perogies to start and they were amazing.

He had a lot of business questions, some I couldn’t answer but most I gave him something, nothing I shouldn’t have of course. Most of what I do in my role is highly confidential so I’ve become accustomed to not openly answering questions and I think about reprecussions of my answers before I give them. I didn’t notice myself getting that way but it’s starting to be more automatic. I dropped him off at his hotel around eight and I went home and binged some Marvel Strike Force again. I watched a bit of YouTube and got on the computer for a bit. There was no D&D tonight in case you were wondering, one of the party had company so we had to push it a night. We should break our long hiatus tomorrow night. I found my bed around half nine and was asleep around ten. I’d call it a good day out of the office.