Bayous, boardrooms and Baton Rouge

Life is full  of whimsy and adventure, and I’m soaking it all in. 

 

Last week I flew to Baton Rouge, Louisiana for three days for work. You see, Baton Rouge is where my magazine and its parent company are located, so I actually got to go meet my coworkers face to face and spend some time in the office instead of working in my apartment. 

 

Because our company is small, it does feel like family. I felt like I was going on a trip to see my friends rather than on a work trip. We flew in on a Wednesday, where I met one of the other editors on my connecting flight and we chatted our whole flight into Baton Rouge.

 

Wednesday night we (the four editors from all the different markets who had flown in) were on our own to do some work and decide what we wanted to do with our evening. We settled on trying the classic Louisiana daiquiris (which you can get to-go and they even have drive-throughs down south) and dinner at some restaurant (they served pork rinds instead of bread or chips), followed by ice cream and an early bedtime. 

 

Thursday we spent in the office, with two (in person!) meetings and an afternoon of trying to grind out some work. It was a lot of fun to be in the same room working with the other editors and just being able to walk down the hall to ask questions to whoever. 

 

That night the publisher and CEO (who are married) took the whole team (and it felt like half the company) to dinner at a little Cajun seafood place. I had the paella, which was delicious. Then one of the sales girls took us editors to her favorite bar across the street where we listened to a live band called the Ugly Uncles. 

 

On Friday, we started the day with a zumba class, taught by one of the editors who is an instructor. We had to cut that short, unfortunately, for our final meeting, which lasted three hours. Personally, I thought that was a bit extreme, but Jack told me that that is just corporate America. The worst part was that two and half of those hours seemed pointless, or at least pointless to me, as the CEO just talked at us about his grand ideas that we had either already thought of in previous meetings or that we knew might never be implemented. But he was passionate and most of his ideas seemed very cool, despite probably never coming to our company. They just didn’t quite relate to us most of the time. 

 

Other things I learned on my trip: 

 

People really do gator hunt in the south. Two of my coworkers told us all about how to gator hunt and how they used to ship them off to the factories and warehouses in bins of ice. 

 

I forgot about humidity. Stepping into the thick, warm Louisiana air, I hadn’t realized how much I had gotten used to the dry Denver mountain air. I missed the Minnesota humidity, but after a couple hours adventuring outside, I did not in fact miss it. 

 

LSU’s tiger mascot is a real tiger, Mike the Tiger, who sits in an enclosure across the street from their stadium. We got to see him napping in the sun. 

 

Our CEO let us editors take his Jeep and explore the city on Friday afternoon. Top down, doors off, music blasting…now I want a Jeep. 

 

My Determination: “I love it here! It's like Cheers. Except nobody knows my name.” - Jacob, Abbott Elementary