golf carts

so after much haggling over whether to rent a car or take a cab for the trip (potentially plural tripS) for extra equipment and supplies for the trade show booth, then deciding that the rental car would make the most sense, and finally finding that all of Avis' cars were rented, I took a cab to home depot.

home depot was out of everything I needed. even their own orange home depot paint buckets. out. orange stickers with in-stock dates. in-stock dates of yesterday and the day before? wtf?

about an hour and a half of shopping there and i called my cab-truck to come get me. the guy was pleasant enough, small talk on the way back to the conv center. we circle around a few times, looking for the delivery bay door for hall C. i can see our booth. we pull up to the door at hall C and begin to unload.

this is where it gets fucked up.

2 security guards pull up on separate golf carts. painted dark blue, these golf carts look as though they'd been dropped off the empire state building.

"Can't do it!" Security guard one says. I say, oh, I just need to bring these bags and sawhorses in right there. I got 2 guys coming out to help me. He walks over to the back of the cab and looks in, he seems to agree, no big deal for me to bring this little pile of stuff in.

Security guard two pulls up, inspects the pile in the back of the Ford Explorer for a full 30 seconds. I could have been inside in this amount of time.

"Nope. No way." he says. So, SecGuard one says to SecGuard two, "it's just that stuff, he can bring it in." I'm eyeing the golf cart, maybe this dude will help me?

"No!!" and SG2 zips off. Humiliated, SG1 yells at me and the cab driver to follow him to gate G (we are at C, and i am looking over at my booth. We remount our trusty steed and start slowly following the beat up blue shitbox golf cart. SG1 looks a bit like Morgan Freeman. he seems nice, but he keeps yelling at us, mostly because he was just yelled at by his boss.

about halfway to gate G i see my guys. they flag us down. the cab driver pulls over and pops the back trunk door open. SG1 pulls over and parks at the wall, and starts waving madly at us. we wave back because we are now all set, we'll just walk in. he dismounts and quickly stompwalks at us, yelling the whole way. he walks around to the back of the explorer.

"Put the bag down! Put-the-bag-down!" he is now in full-on security guard tsa swat-team mode, though i take care to notice he isn't armed. i tell the guys, just do it, it's a whole fucking situation, just do what he says, hop in and we'll walk in from gate G. the guys jump in and the security guard walks around and then walks over to the passenger side door.

"I gotta ride with you guys. My cart's outta juice."