I hate what used to be German food.

I haven't written about the geekfest conference yet, because nothing really bad happened, unless you consider getting drunk on sake and singing karaoke in a Japanese restaurant really bad. Oh, and my singing. My singing was really bad.

Usually, at least one gross thing happens to me when I am at any sort of conference. One year, it was the stall-vomiting incident, another year it was the rotten feet, last year it was the serial snot-snorter. This year it was the second-hand fart. You would think that would be better than a first-hand fart, but you'd be wrong. I'm not exactly sure why, but it just is. Take my word for it.

If you don't know much about Lotusphere, understand one thing. It's huge. There are anywhere from 8000 to 10,000 people in attendance, and there are technical sessions from 7am to 6pm every day for 5 days. The conference rooms are set up with row upon row of padded chairs, usually with a center aisle and two side aisles. The seats are jammed together so you are pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder with the guy (or girl) next to you. You would think that this close proximity would make people more deodorant and chewing gum conscious, but no. (Also, skinny white dude with the dreadlocks that reach the center of your back -- wash that shit. You smell like old socks dipped in sour milk.)

Anyway, the pattern of seat occupancy is generally this -- the seats on the outside aisles go first, then the seats on the inside aisles. Then the back rows. Since there is very little time between sessions in some cases, the goal, for me at least, is to shoot for the easy exit. So I got into the habit of just going to the back row and pulling a chair out of formation and sitting on it. It was a win-win. I didn't have to touch shoulders with the guys next to me, and I could split whenever it was necessary.

So with that background planted firmly in your minds, here's my gross tale for this year's conference. I was sitting in the back row in my pulled-out chair, just minding my own business and taking copious notes (my boss might be reading this) when the 2 large coffees I had after lunch started to work their magic. I put my notebook down, put my far-away-seeing geek glasses on top of the notebook and got up to go to the bathroom.

I was gone maybe 5 minutes total, and when I came back in, there was some dude sitting in my seat. My glasses and notebook were on the floor.

I leaned over and said, "You're in my seat." He looked at me, and said something in what I think was German. I pointed at the chair and said, "I just had to use the men's room. I was sitting there." He finally understood what I was getting at, and stood up to go somewhere else. I picked my notebook and glasses from the floor, and sat down. This was unfortunate. I have no way of confirming this, but I believe what he initially said to me in German was "Trust me. You don't want your chair back right now."

Why? Because German dude left me a present. The second my ass hit the seat, I was instantly surrounded by a very foul, very fresh German fart that had been, until very recently, buried deeply in the chair. It was horrible. I stood up so fast you would have thought there was a hot coal under my ass. I think I actually would have preferred that, now that I mentioned it.

That marked the end of "60 Admin Tips in 60 Minutes" for me, because "60 Admin Tips and One Fart in 48 Minutes" was already more than I had signed up for.

In case you were wondering, the song I butchered the shit out of was Sister Golden Hair by America.


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