The type of consulting I do is such that I am in one location for 3 months up to 3 years. This particular assignment in Islandia, NY is one of the longer term opportunities. As you can imagine, living in a hotel precludes any home cooked dinners. And after a while, going to dinner gets to be a little monotonous. Recently some colleagues of mine and I decided to try something new. Near where we work is one of those gaming / dining places called Dave and Busters. You can eat there, sit at the bar and watch sports or go in their good sized game room and play all types of video games and other fun things. Well, no D&B would be complete without the Pop-a-Shot game where you try to make as many baskets as you can. Like many games there, you can compete against others. So hopefully you can see where this is leading.
After a very busy day, one of my colleagues brought up the idea of going for a little Pop-a-shot throw-down. He plays basketball in the company’s intramural league and me being of Indiana descent where basketball is in my blood was up for the challenge. Some pre-game smack talk flew back and forth and our other colleagues wanted to come witness this. We all went and had dinner there first and then as they say, it was time to ‘let the games begin’. We had a warm-up match and then the real thing. Best of 3… The first match I was soundly beaten. The second match I gave the sound beating. The third and decisive match saw me receive an even more soundly beating. After all the smack talk, I received a sound whooping and it made it worse as 3 colleagues witnessed it.
After that we moved on to the NASCAR racing game where up to 6 people can race against each other. This is definitely another great way to let off some steam and have some mildly competitive fun.
Editor’s Note: 2 weeks later the wife of one my colleagues was even talking some post game smack about my defeat at Pop-a-shot. Apparently word had traveled far and wide…
