What's Orlando really like?

Ok- so I wasn't with the company when the managers went on their trip to Orlando, but believe me, I heard about it many, many times. Actually, from the way it was described to me, it was spun like it was some kind of etopia. But like most things at ERAC, I've recently been lead to believe THAT THINGS MIGHT NOT BE THE WAY THEY FIRST APPEARED!!

Actually, I have to thank 6figures on letting me think outside the box on this one- he posted a few weeks ago that before you board that plane, you've got to recite those founding values...true? who knows. But I wouldn't doubt it for a second.

Then there was this post from missinglink:
**i remember when i worked there - those gay managers would get so geeked up to go to the florida trip. they act like they are going on a vacation but you are going on a 3 day seminar that might as well be in minnesota (no offense). you take a flight home at the butt crack of dawn on a sunday morning and are then expected to be in to work nice and early on monday morning with that pot of coffee brewing for joe corporate customer.**

I guess I haven't figured out why it's in Orlando? Do they go to Disney/Universal? Orlando is not near the beach and everywhere you go has to be air conditioned.
Unless you're spending time at the theme parks, I would think that if you were going to Florida, you would want to be near a coastline, like one of those hundreds of beach/resort areas it's known for...

So at this time, I would like to ask all former managers who post on this site to please share with us what Orlando is really like, from start to finish. Please omit nothing!

You go on a Thur - fly in on the cheapest flight available - take a long bus trip to your hotel

have to find someone you know or someone new while waiting in line to check in to room with

all the area and city mgrs are there before you get there and are all half drunk upon your arrival

since no one can drive in - all the garages are open so they put pool tables and ping pong tables in there - yet the jackasses dont realize that garages are slanted

they have buses to downtown disney to take you to pleasure island - they have an area roped off behind Mannequins for ERAC employees - yet its odd because Mannequins is about the gayest gay club in Florida

U have meetings on Fri and Sat - one day will be sitting in a room with 1000 people listening to diff speakers - they they have intermission and make 1 big room where Andy Taylor addresses the crowd - this is your 1/2 day

the other day you sit in a room with 4 area or city managers and about 15 branch managers and discuss the 4 balance points and have breakdown groups - TOTALLY USELESS !!! this is your full day

Fri night they rent out a park at disney or universal - last year was MGM and this year they are going to Islands of Adventure

Sat they have a banquet with everyone in attendance where they give out all the awards and wheel jack taylor out so he can speak - all the jackasses stand up and cheer for him...they have laser shows and all kinds of crap but its damn boring

Sat night they have the final banquet / dinner afterwards for everyone ....

They have free bud light and bud everywhere -- at the theme parks and dinners ...

and on sunday you leave at various times -- but since EVERYONE flies the same airline I almost missed my flights 2 years in a row cause of so many fuckers in line

All in all its not the worst trip - only problem is these fockers come from all over the country and its like they have never seen a building taller than 2 stories before...there is so many drunk fights and people hooking up in bathrooms and on the buses to the hotels it gets ridiculous

last year at downtown disney a bunch of guys from alabama and new york fought each other because they were drunk assholes

2 area managers drove in from jacksonville last year and got hammered on the way in - and fell asleep at their meetings and were fired

different grp leaders usually take care of thier managers by taking them to a nice dinner 1 night instead of eating the b-@#%$ food they provide at the hotel

im spent

You forgot the part where the Taylor's et al motivate the troops to go and annex Poland.

I guess it wasn't really that bad, and for your average worked to death ERAC manager it is kind of like a vacation... I always found it ironic that they made us go down there on our personal time (Saturday and Sunday) and then expected us to be back at work on Monday all bright and cheery! You guys also forgot the motivational peaker, Keith Harrel, Mr super fantastic himself. I would always have to listen to my idiot boss quote him after the meetings...

You mean it's only 2 days long?? (I am NOT joking) The they made it sound to this MT was a 3-4 day free-for-all with a chance to see THE legendary Taylors, and it wasn't counting your travel days...

You would usually travel down on Thrusday and return and the butt crack of dawn on Sunday. Like somebody else said, they only booked the cheapest flights, so you could count on terrible departure times and multiple connections and layovers...

Depending on where you are coming from - it can be ridiculous

I know my area was a 2 hr flight away - but they still booked flights with stop overs in Atlanta on the way down - and a bunch of managers were at the bar a few years back and missed their flights in

Upon leaving - you needed to get there 3 hours or more early cause the damn groups all booked on SW ...cause it was the cheapest Im sure ..and the line was LONG

My fave part is the technology they speak of getting ....same speech every year - I went to work at a competitor and they had the very technology ERAC spoke of already - and had had it for a few years.....joke !

I was from a Fl Group so we had to drive ourselves. I had some good times with the managers I went with. We would all go have lunch together and then pile into a minivan. You know, the whole road trip deal.

"Irlando" itself I found to be boring. The meetings were drivel and you can only drink so much beer and eat so many soft pretzels (the over night food of choice in the parking garage arcade).

Mostly, if you were married like me, it was like having the devil tempt you with tits and alcohol, and if you were not going to give in, you had to go to meetings with the devil to put you back in line. There were some nice tits though. (I only looked.)

PS. I dont think I have ever seen so much beer in one place. It was like they were just itching to get you fired.

You are not supposed to rent a car when you are in Irlando. They have this group of what must be a couple hundred chaperone's for lack of a better term. Anywhere the managers go it's via coach busses and wherever you end up throughout the course of the night, when you leave, WHEREVER you are, there are the pink shirt people pointing you toward a bus that is going to drop you off at your hotel. It's amazing how good these people are, I have to say it. I couldn't even say my name a few of those times but I knew what hotel I was in because the pink shirt people pointed me toward my bus. However, the hotels are like resorts so when they dropped me off at my hotel I still had two walk about a mile to my hotel room, or at least it seemed that way.

So Thursday you get there and Thursday night you head down to City Walk. Everyone is down at city walk and there are Group managers opening up the tab at almost any bar you go to. Talk about temptation. They tell you prior to the trip to go down and have fun but not to do anything stupid like fight or miss a break out session. While at the same time there are open bar tabs everywhere and hospitality tents in every hotel that will serve you anything as long as you have the Enterprise wrist band.

Then you have the women. You have to be a mgr or higher to go on the trip so most of the women are mgr's. So if you if you are looking for promotional sex, you better be an area manager or a city mgr or higher, because if the girls are looking for the brass ring, they will avoid you. That is of course until the end of the night when they are so drunk they will screw anything with a pulse.

Im ugly so I just go drunk and avoided that aspect of the adventure. So on Friday you either go to a meeting with Don Ross and Andy Taylor where they just give the usual State of Enterprise address and talk about founding value's and any new bu11sh1t that they thought up over the past year. Or you spend your first day in a break out class with a bunch of different people. The talks are the usual bull, nothing important, but you get a cool pen and leather bound folder out of the deal so it's worth waking up for that. In my instance I had the break out session my first day and the Ross/Taylor meeting the second day. They took attendance for the breakout session but not for the other one so I stayed in bed on the second day. Granted if they knew I did that, they would have fired me, but whatever!!

So after the second day they have a huge dinner usually sponsored by some big car conglomerate. One year they had the head of General Motors footing the bill for all six thousand of us to eat and drink. The GM guy told us how wonderful Ecrap was to their company and then introduced some new car models that we would see before the general public. Then Ecrap did some foolish light show around the room and Andy and Jack came out. Jack sort of reminds you of the Pope, he just sits there and dribbles all over himself. He probably doesn't even know where he is.

That night, you tempt yourself not to go out because you know that you have to be on the plane Sunday morning at 5am red eye. But temptation is hard for some people, me included. So I met the rest of the company down at one of the theme parks. We had open rain on the theme park that night but my co workers wanted to booze so we found our GVP and boozed with him until 2am.

On the way back my bus broke down a mile away from the hotel, so they just stopped the bus and we had to walk back to our rooms. Now considering the fact that my room was about a mile away from the front desk, this two mile jaunt wasn't something I wanted to be doing. So now back at the hotel I thought I'd pack and lie down for 1/2 hour. I woke up an hour before my flight.

So I run to the bus and get to the airport and they dropped the whole bus off before they even reached my terminal. Long story short, they held the plane for me. If I missed that plane, not only would I have had to pay for my own flight, I probably would have gotten canned.

So the flight ends, you drive all the other people in your group back to their homes (because you are told to carpool), and then you crash for the rest of the day. But you have to be in the office an hour earlier than everyone else on Monday because you need to set an example.

Over the next month after the Irlando trip, the firings begin. Anyone that missed a break out, got into a fight, had sexual relations with the wrong person, said the wrong thing, got to drunk, didn't get drunk enough, didn't kiss enough ass, usually were on the list to be fired. I was a team player, I boozed with them, I laughed at there jokes, and ultimately I stuck around for a few of these trips. But like most of Ecrap I don't miss the Irlando Trip. They can keep it.

my only question is do managers from Ireland, the UK and Germany also attend the Orlando event? that trip would HAVE to be hellish.