what happens in vegas
The players:
Me, age 17
My brother Marc, who is 12 years older than me
My brother George, who is 16 years older than me
I had just finished my first semester of college. I was working for Best Buy in the computer department as a salesman, which was my first job ever. I really bought into the whole cheesy company mentality that places like Best Buy try to instill in their workers to boost morale and distract them from all the things that make their job terrible (and, in my opinion, there are a lot of them at Best Buy). Nevertheless, I was very interested in computers as a hobby, and I was really excited to be able to make $7 an hour talking about something I was interested in.
At the time, my brothers both worked for Nielsen Media Research. If you aren't familiar with this company, they are the people who (among other things) track who watches what TV shows when and determines the ratings, and then sells the data to advertising companies. Marc was a field technician; he went around to peoples' houses and installed a box in their TV that tracked what channel they were watching and sent the data to the company. George was a technical support lead; he provided in-company assistance to the field technicians, as well as other things like write training documents and come up with new service protocol. He had been promoted to this position after great work as a field technician and got Marc his old job.
A quick aside about my brother Marc: he's the one who showed me how to play blackjack. Even if you're good at math and games in general, it's a daunting game to try and figure out how to play on your own, because the best strategy is so wildly different depending on what rules you're playing with. He knew how though, and watching him play made it look really easy. If it wasn't for him, I'd have never taken blackjack (or gambling at all for that matter) seriously, and I wouldn't have had the motivation to study the things I ended up studying in school. I'm extremely satisfied with the path I chose, so on some level I have him to thank for that, even though nowadays it has very little to do with gambling.
Nielsen wanted to send George to the CES in Las Vegas as a buyer, to research some new products that could be used for media research. All of my brothers are party animals, so obviously this wouldn't just be a business trip. Marc and George decided to make a weekend out of it and expense whatever they could to the company. Being interested in blackjack but never having played it for money before, I wanted to go too.
Logistically, it worked out just fine. I was in between semesters at school, had plenty of money from working at Best Buy, and since I was only a part time employee (and not even a great one to begin with), taking a couple days off was no big deal.
The only two major hurdles left were that I wasn't 21, and that to go to CES you needed to be a representative of some kind of company interested in new technologies; basically, you needed a reason to be there, since it wasn't exactly open to the public. That part was easy: I worked for Best Buy, so I applied for a show pass as an employee of Best Buy. I wrote my job title down as "associate." Nobody needed to know that I was some dinky part time employee, and besides, technically I was a "sales associate" anyway.
As for not being 21, well, that problem would be a little more difficult to solve. A fake ID was out of the question, because that's not how I roll.
I went to a high school that didn't let anybody grow any facial hair. I'm also of middle eastern descent, so I'm super hairy, and had to shave pretty regularly ever since the 10th grade. I hated that I had to do it or else I'd get punished, so as soon as I graduated, I decided to stop shaving and grow a beard. This might be hard to picture, but I had a really thick beard for a pretty long stretch of time around then, especially for a 17 year old. My brothers and I decided that my best chance to drink and gamble underage was to grow a beard and dress the part of a 25 year old, and hope I never got into any trouble.
After all the logistics were taken care of, we were off to Vegas.
We stayed in some dumpy hotel and gambled a lot in various nice casinos before, in between, and after the convention. There were tons and tons of people in town, not just for the CES, but also because down the street at another convention center, there was also an "adult entertainment" convention. (We picked the wrong one to go to.) Aside from learning about what a casino is like a lot earlier than I probably should have, nothing really notable happened. The event of interest happened during the convention itself.
The show was pretty cool. There were tons of booths and demonstrations and freebies from companies who, up until then, I've only known from peddling their products at Best Buy. It was really fun to see all the cool stuff that was coming out. To give a couple (now dated) examples, this show was the first time I had ever seen a really super thin digital camera (it was the Casio Exilim), and it was also the first time I had ever seen a specialty CD-R that was made to look like a record. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
My brothers all thought this stuff was cool too, but of course, they actually had some business to attend to. My brother George met up with another representative of Nielsen at the show to talk shop, and after the conversation, was very vocally irritated at how she seemed to treat him like he was a nobody in the company. Being a kid, I wasn't particularly interested in his business, and he tends to over-dramatize and get angry over things that are probably small in the first place, so I'll never know exactly what that lady said to him and why he was so upset.
The main thing that resulted from that was that both of my brothers wanted nothing more to do with Nielsen during that trip. All they wanted to do was enjoy the rest of the convention, and enjoy the sights and sounds of Vegas a little more before we had to leave.
Another major lesson I learned from my brothers on this trip is that when you're on vacation in a place where you'll never see anyone again, you can be anyone you want to be. The combination of these two things resulted in a lot of bullcrap flying around. As if there wasn't enough already, since I never once got carded or questioned about being 25 and an executive for a major company like Best Buy.
One example (from what was very likely many) that should give you an idea of the level of BS my brothers were capable of was when we were sitting in some restaurant booth at some hotel/casino in Vegas. One of the cocktail girls who was walking around trying to sell cheesy crap (if you've ever been to Vegas you should know what I'm talking about, and if not it's exactly what it sounds like) approached us asking us if we wanted to buy anything, and of course, trying to schmooze us. Sitting there dressed very business casually, she asked us, "So are you guys in town for the convention?"
My brother George answered, "Yeah."
"The electronics convention?"
"No, the porn convention."
She was surprised and intrigued. I could already see my brother's mind working.
"Wow, really? What for?"
"I'm a director. My name is George Steele. A film I directed is up for an award."
"What's it called?"
"George Steele's Dirty Home Amateurs."
It was awesome hearing him say all this stuff and selling it with such conviction. She bought every word. I had a really hard time not laughing.
CES requires that you be an employee of a relevant company to attend, to get into the show you have to wear a badge that has your name, company, and role, kind of like a floor pass. The badge itself was just a slip of paper with your name, company and location on it, in a plastic container with your role at the convention. My badge said
ALEX MAJLATON
BEST BUY
BOWIE MD
and my plastic badge holder said
ASSOCIATE
Walking around the various convention booths, a lot of the company employees asked me about what I did for Best Buy. I never really gave them a good answer, or even noticed why I was getting a lot of questions about it, until one of my brothers pointed it out to me. We were looking at a booth from a rinky-dink up-and-coming company trying to sell LCD monitors, and my brothers (who did most of the talking on the trip, seeing as I was still a pretty shy quiet 17 year old kid) were asking the representative about them. He was responding with questions about where they worked and what he could do for their company. He eventually got to me.
"So what company do you represent?"
"Best Buy."
"Oh, well you should REALLY take a look at our products then!"
It was at that point that my brothers realized that if all the companies thought I was the guy in charge of choosing the products that Best Buy stocked in their stores, I would get a lot of attention from all the people in the booth and get treated like a bigshot.
My brother's plastic holder said BUYER, since he signed up for the show as a buyer for Nielsen. He took his badge out of the holder and gave it to me. I put my badge in and all of a sudden it said:
ALEX MAJLATON
BEST BUY
BOWIE, MD
BUYER
I imagine if you're a company trying to sell your product, seeing this badge would fill your eyes with huge dollar signs. What really made this work was that I was shy and quiet, which added credibility to the fact that I was a buyer for a major company: I didn't really want to attract any attention and be influenced by anything other than the quality of the products, sort of like a covert operative.
Instantly we went with the new plan and persona to the next company. It was a company I'd never heard of and can't remember, but they only manufactured (or at least, only demonstrated) one product: a personal portable karaoke machine, which was basically a CD player with a microphone that let you play instrumental CDs and sing over them, and have them all come out of the same speaker.
The representative was a blond woman in her late 30's / early 40's named Mary Pat. She was pretty bubbly, but when my brothers and I pushed the "buyer for Best Buy" persona, she really laid it on thick. Lots of compliments, eager product demonstrations, contact info, and most importantly, physical contact. (She was really eager to shake my hand, and always found a reason to touch my arm after I said something.) She also seemed to know a lot about Best Buy. I imagine that she had done enough homework to realize that if she could get her foot in the door of some major electronics retailer, her product would take off. I wish I could remember the exact nature of the conversation. It was fun being treated like a bigshot.
After we left her booth, my brothers were saying to me, "Dude, you should call her and invite her out for drinks tonight. I bet you could push her pretty far."
Being young and naive, I didn't realize the implications of what they were saying. Only now thinking back on the story do I realize just how much influence I probably had pretending to be a buyer for Best Buy. That's as far as it went, but it really makes me wonder just how far I could have taken it.
I've attached a picture from the convention that should hopefully serve as proof that this story actually happened. It's me, age 17, with a thick beard, with two Polk Audio booth girls.
Thank you for reading!
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