But not for fun and not over the weekend. Save yourself some boredom and walk away now.
As you may know, but probably don’t, the COSO framework is being updated, so I had to get my learn on in order to prepare for implementation. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) was holding a two-day training session in Las Vegas and flights were only $150, so Seth decided to take a few days off and tag along. The Sema car show was going on which meant that he had plenty to keep him entertained while I was at training.
The first night, we had a late supper at YOLO’s which was within walking distance of our hotel. It wasn’t very busy compared to the other restaurants that we saw and was also very dark. The waiter messed up my order, by giving me fish instead of shrimp tacos, but I like both so it wasn’t a big deal. We just had an overall feeling of “meh” over the whole thing.
We walked back to our hotel, which was a block off the strip and a complete dump. As in, the walls down our hallway were scraped up, the tub filled up with scummy water during my showers and the grout between the cracked bathroom tiles was full of mold. At least there were only two lamps in the room, so we couldn’t see how filthy the rest of it was. A little advice: don’t work in a low margin business like protein if you want to stay in decent hotels on work trips.
Since our room was depressing and it wasn’t even 9 pm, we decided to sit at the bar for a while and watch TV. A guy sitting across the counter would not stop staring at us, so we finally got up and walked to the elevators. As we were on our way, he rushed past and got in the elevator with us and two other people. He stared at us in the elevator and then looked back over his shoulder as he was getting off on the 3rd floor. We got off on the 9th floor and started toward our room laughing about his odd behavior. I may have been imitating his elevator exit and Seth may have been saying something about his birthing hips when I saw a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and suddenly the guy was behind us and calling down the hallway that he thought he knew us.
We said no but he kept following us down the hallway asking if we went mountain biking in North Carolina. Not unless that’s the new slang for chicken plant audits……
By this time we had walked past our room and were rapidly approaching the end of the hallway. He finally stopped and said that we should all get a drink sometime and Seth said that we were probably leaving that night.
Either the guy was completely drunk, or a total weirdo. It was way creepy that he paid attention to our floor number and then followed us. Seth told the security staff about the incident and walked me to my taxi and back every day. While the incident was super creepy, I was so happy to have Seth with me!
The next night, we went to Burgr which was super tasty and the best part about our visit other than getting to spend some time together, and of course: COSO.
We got the Hog Burger and the Euro Burger with truffle parmesan fries and shared everything. They were both really good in different ways.
On the way back to our hotel after dinner at Burgr, we ran into Bumblebee
and Lt. Dangle
He really liked Seth.
I learned a lot at the training and feel confident that the company I work for really doesn’t have any big changes to make in order to be compliant, but it was really helpful and even fun to be immersed in the IIA world and COSO talk for two days.
Goes to show what a nerd I am.
Also, the desserts were really good and so tiny that I didn’t feel bad eating a ton of them. The event staff kept offering and I kept taking. At one point, it got to be a little excessive with them running to get me fresh coffee, but I’m not complaining.
I mentioned our dive of a hotel to a government auditor who was lamenting how tight spending is for government entities. Her nightly limit was $300/room and she was upgraded to the presidential suite in her hotel. Not sure if she understood how ironic that was….
It’s so cool that you two could get away for a couple of days. I’m jealous! Good thing Seth was there for the creepy guy incident.
It was nice to hang out without the kids and I was really happy that Seth was there when the creepy guy followed us. I was scared to go anywhere after that!
I know, I know!! COSO 2013!! haha we’ve been talking about it a lot in my Internal Control class! Although my professor, and I see his point, is quite skeptical that firms will take so much money/resources to implement it unless it is eventually required.
Haha! We’re such nerds! I’ve heard of one company that is doing early implementation, but our instructor said that it’s just a matter of time before it’s required so we might as well get up to speed earlier rather than later. I was also surrounded by IIA members who were there because they were already using the original framework, so there’s that……
After the training, our external auditors sent me a spreadsheet showing their analysis of our controls in relation to the new framework and it looks like we won’t need to change anything major- yay for Pilgrim’s! 🙂