Not To Be Confused With Oakland, CA

I’ve just finished my second business trip to Oakland, MD and I’m happy to say I finally figured out where I was in the overall Maryland geography. I may as well have been in West Virginia. Both times I flew into Baltimore because that is where my coworker lives and works, so she picked me up and then we drove 3 hours west, to the furthest western tip of Maryland – literally a hop, skip and jump from West Virginia. The town was cute, but where I stayed was better because it was called the Wisp Mountain Resort and was located at the base of a “ski resort” (not to be confused with ski resorts you may know in Lake Tahoe) and beside a beautiful lake called Deep Creek Lake. I think that’s what they did – dammed a creek. But it was pretty and at least provided some highlights to the overall drab business trips to Oakland. This place was as opposite from Oakland, California as you could possibly get. A tiny town with only two main streets, every person was white and I only saw American-made vehicles. Walking down the street for the first time, I literally felt like I had stepped back in time to the 1950s. It was the first time in my life that I felt like a big-city girl and was shocked at the small town in the middle of nowhere.

I’ll admit, I’ve become a food snob since living in SF because I’m surrounded by such great food of all ethnicities that chain restaurants have become drab in comparison. But the places I usually travel to for business only bring me to food chain/big box towns and cities, so that now I’m excited to see a Ruby Tuesdays (one of the better ones in my opinion). I joked once that an Oregon client was so excited about my visit because it meant that her company would pay for us to eat at Olive Garden, and they “absolutely loved Olive Garden!!!” But in Oakland, MD, when inquiring about restaurants, two of the main recommendations were Denny’s and Sheetz Gas Station (“where the fries are great!!”). This same girl went on to give me a comparison of a few Sheetz Gas Stations she had been too..”Cumberland and Hagerston are really big, ours in Oakland is small”. Sadly, I did not get fries at Sheetz, nor step foot in Dennys while there. Or should I say luckily? In fact the resort hotel I was staying at (which was $73/night since it was in the middle of nowhere) actually had a fantastic restaurant thank goodness.

But these business trips in general kill me. Literally. I have to put my best foot forward, be patient, bite my tongue when asked questions I consider ridiculous. This time it was the following interaction that really epitomized the whole visit:

When trying to figure out how to get information from one place to another:

Mingle: “You could copy and paste it into a Word Document”
Customer: “I don’t know how to do that”

The customer was deadly serious, and it’s not the first time I’ve heard things like this. Whereby I boldly declare, “yes you do – right click, choose copy. Open Word (the one with the “W” yes) right click, choose paste.” The customer was so excited to learn this ‘new’ thing she was beaming.

Now is the point when maybe I should mention – I am traveling to banks to work with people who handle our money.

Right click – copy. Right click – paste. That will be $1,000,000 please.