Friday, January 16, 2009

VIPs

In the last two jobs I held (prior to my current, wonderful job), I was issued a blackberry so that I could be reached anywhere and at any time. Which, frankly, used to crack me up. I'm in marketing -- what were they going to do -- contact me with a marketing emergency? ("Kathleen, sorry to bother you at 2:00am, but we need brochures and web content developed...STAT!")

I was reminded of this yesterday when I contacted my friend, Meredith, who lives in NYC to see if she was witness to any of the "plane crash in the Hudson" goings-on. (She is a special events planner at a hospital in Manhattan.) She said that she didn't see the plane, but that when anything like that happens, the hospital goes into lock down mode and that everyone runs to their command center. No one can leave in case they need people to assist. Makes sense for medical personnel...but as she said, "What the hell am I going to do? Plan a disaster party?"

4 comments:

Cockey said...

So after the plane crashed several of us were standing in the crafty truck watching it on the news when I decided to speak up. "Shouldn't the plane be sinking?" to which I received this reply "No, dude, in emergencies such as this the seat cushions can be used as flotation devices." HA. Absolute serious response from one of my co-workers. I think this will make its way into my next column.

Dilettard07 said...

I was wondering about this, too. I thought perhaps they dumped fuel and the empty tanks provided buoyancy. But apparently Airbus has some nifty features for the A320:

http://www.eyeonspain.com/blogs/eyeonthesky/1097/airbus-a320-can-float-better-than-most.aspx

Brutalism said...

Interesting article, Dilettard07. This morning, the CNN anchors brought up my first question, which was, "why don't they have some kind of screen over the engines?" It's a weight/cost of fuel issue, apparently.

Anonymous said...

My work issues me a Blackberry as well. Mostly I use it to issue text msgs of the variety "wat r u w3aring?"