OVERHEARD IN MONTEREY- CELL PHONE CHATTER

Monterey was an "overheard" bonanza. I think that's because the place was literally teeming with people on vacation, and I have observed that people who are vacationing are much more free with overheards than those who are found in their normal environs. I think this is so because of the quasi-anonymity that comes with being on vacation.

I will break down the overheards I gleened into the following 4 categories and spread them out over four posts;

1. Overheard Cell Phone Chatter
2. Overheard in passing
3. Overheard through the window of room 393, The Clement
and
4. Overheard at restaurants

Let's tackle them in order, shall we?

1. OVERHEARD CELL PHONE CHATTER-

Almost every morning while we were in Monterey I woke up about an hour or so before Sarah and went down to the hotel's main lobby to read my Bible before starting the day in earnest. As I walked through the quiet corridors, the smell of breakfast fixings and freshly brewed coffee wafted up to me from the hotel's kitchen, reminding me that somewhere deep in the bowels of the hotel people were laboring. I was surprised to find that this knowledge filled me with a perverse joy. The feeling was somewhat akin to what I used to experience when I would see the school bus go by, filled with its miserable cargo, after I had graduated a free man from High School. It may have been wrong, this feeling I had, and, if so, you may consider this a confession, but that is how I felt. Perhaps I was like Magua, whose heart had become twisted and who made himself into what twisted him. Or perhaps the Elois and the Morlocks would be a more fitting literary analogy for my lack of empathy for the grunts laboring away in their shadowy underworld. Anyway, the confession is this, my joy was magnified all the more by these occasional reminders of the work-a-day world, which I had blissfully stepped outside of. So with the smell of breakfast and coffee in my nose, and the knowledge that deciding where to eat would be the most difficult decision I would be called upon to make that day, I kicked on down to the main lobby feeling light as a feather.

There I joined a group of business men who I suspect were from the east coast.  I supect so because it was early in the morning here in CA, but the eastern seaboard, which is three hours ahead, of course, had been open for business for quite a while by then. These men had spread out in the spacious lobby with their laptops flipped open, papers spread around them, and with cell phones pressed to their ears. For some reason it struck me as funny to see them conducting business in shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops. It was kind of like watching a policeman arrest somebody in his pajamas. I wondered if the people on the other end of the telephone imagined them in their normal  uniform of suit and tie as they talked. Probably.

It was the same group of three men that I joined each morning. The first was an older gentleman with a stately bearing who spoke in a very level, matter-of-fact sort of way. He looked and acted the part of an executive, like he was right out of central casting. I thought it curious that for three mornings in a row he had a folded up newspaper and a tall glass of orange juice on the table to his left, which he never touched. The second man was short, with a dark, mediteranean complexion and an enormous gold watch on his wrist. He talked with a rapid fire brilliance, which amazed and fascinated me. No sooner had a question been posed to him then he shot off an answer, and that without a shade of doubt or hesitation. Between phone calls he would slump in his chair and fiddle on his laptop with a bored expression on his face. He seemed most alive when he was on the phone. The third man was different than the first two in that man #1 and #2 both kept their phone calls short and talked probably 75% of the time. Business Man #3's calls were longer and he mostly listened, occasionally inserting an "uh-huh" to demonstrate that he was still listening. He was also younger. Maybe my age? He had longish, red hair, which fell scruffily below his ears, and he also had small, close set eyes in an impossibly broad, round, flat face. This gave the strange effect that he was like a huge, walking doll. Not like a store-bought doll, but more like one that had been manufactured exclusively from available materials in the hard-scrabble hills of Appalachia. Despite his appearance, which truly struck me as kind of unfortunate, I judged from the conversations which I overheard that he was a person of weight and substance within his sphere of influence.

Business Man #1-

"No, tell Stan he doesn't need to do that. I'll be back next week and I'll take care of it then."

"Which one? Philadelphia or Virginia? (brief pause) Virginia! (another brief pause, then...) D*** it!"

"See if he'll come down some more, and if not, then give Wayne a call and see where he prices that at."

"We're in Monterey. (pause) Yeah, it's beautiful. (pause) Okay then, I'll see you next week. Have it set up for me when I get back. Talk to you then."

Business Man #2-

"Hey! How are ya?"

"No. Have Bruce do it."

"Discount him 20%."

"Don't worry about that. Just have her forward me the quote."

"He's still under budget for the quarter though."

"No, that's right. That's what I told him before I left."

Business Man #3-

"Go ahead and set aside 400K for John."

"Tell him I said not to do that until after the meeting."

"Let's reschedule. I think they need more time."

"I think that's fair, but have him send it over to Tim anyway."