How lovely to come home (at 10:45pm!) to the supportive comments from my friends. It means a lot, especially considering the day, which was challenging but rewarding. As far as our guests from Japan are concerned, I believe it was a successful day. We picked them up at noon as expected, drove them back to the office under scrubbed-clean blue skies dotted only here and there with puffy white clouds, had our tour and our meeting, and answered all of the questions they had prepared for us. Then we went back to the city and to Mac World, answering more questions on the way and telling them more about our approach to tradeshows and how we market our company. We toured the show, H-san realized he had left his business cards at our office but I was able to contact someone else coming to the city in time to have him meet us at the restaurant with the business cards (phew!). Dinner was probably the best series of gourmet courses I have ever had in my life, and I may ask the restaurant to fax me their menu so I can post all the incredible foods I ate, because I'm sure I'll never see that type of meal again and I want to document the occasion.
The only real glitch in the day, which I've pretty much already let go of so I can sleep a full night in peace and get on with my life, is that during our tour the VP of Sales and I (both of whom should have known better) committed a major faux-pas and brought our honored guests into one engineering area without adequate (and, as I learned, previously requested) forewarning for the engineers. This resulted in the person in the company with the one of the worst tempers becoming livid, and unloading what I know was only a fraction of his fury at me in a quick aside while the tour was completing. I sit next to this guy every day. In some ways, he's my boss. Tomorrow morning, I'll no doubt hear the rest of his incensed lecture about how completely terrible what we did was. I mean, he was pissed. And he's a big, angry guy in general. And why was he pissed? Besides the stupidity and disrespect of us not warning him - when really, really, we knew better, I admit it - he's sure that our guests were only there to see what they could about our technical process to steal it. That's his take on it. Mine is not quite so paranoid or racist. Besides which, I'm convinced they couldn't have seen anything from the 20 seconds they were partially in the room that would have told them anything of importance. But it'll be a long time before I hear the end of it, and a long time before the sore spot that was created today heals, if it ever does.
But as for me? I don't care. I just don't. I really am not concerned about what happened. I'm only hoping I can maintain the correct respect and contriteness while keeping detached and while not letting on that I really don't give a fig about his anger and that I refuse to take up the anxiety and negative *stuff* that he'll be wanting to perpetuate for who-knows-how-long. That's his deal. It's not mine.
Sigh.
I mean, come on. Lighten up, buddy. We don't have that kind of time. Move on.
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