Our First Business Trip/ The DC part

Arlie again.
So I was telling you the other day about our trip to meet buyers for our clothes. What I did not tell you is that we only had three days to do all that. We got to NY on Sunday afternoon and we were supposed to get back to Miami the following Wednesday.

Before I go further in my story, I just want to let everyone know that I do not want to sound offensive in what I'm going to say, but not everything is rosy all the time and you have to say things like they are....So with all due respect...

During our trip we were also supposed to meet with representatives of that famous African designer, so that we could get samples of his clothing lines to show to our buyers.
Before we left to NY, the plan was to meet his representative ( who was a member of his family) in the Big Apple. They had wanted at first that we pay an airplane ticket and a hotel room for them to meet us in NY ( Huh? ). As I told you, our budget was tighter than a needle point so we finally agreed to pay for road transportation only.

On Monday morning we call them to find out when they were going to meet us. They say they'll call us back. On Tuesday we say hey! we are going back to Miami tomorrow so it's important that we meet you guys TODAY. They say they are tired and they aren't going nowhere. HAH. Don't get me started about how WE African people do business like that and the reason why WE are at the place we are now.

Try to explain to me WHY when we are giving that very famous designer the opportunity to present his lines to buyers from Macys, Saks and other departments stores, his representatives does not want to meet us halfway. All of us are trying to make it. WHY can't they help us and we help them? Why oh why?

So then it's decision time. Manda and I decide to leave NY after all our meetings to Washington and get back to the City in time for our afternoon plane back to Miami.

Because the money is tight, instead of taking the regular bus line ( greyhound) to DC, we decide to take the Chinese bus which is 1/3 of the regular price. We buy two round trips and leave NY at 6pm.
My God! We spend 5 excruciating frigging hours in that frigging bus (excuse my French but it's my blog so I'll use whatever language i deem necessary!). Here we are inside the bus, the only black girls surrounded by people who barely speak English, bombarded during five hours with Chinese Hip Hop, people pigging out all over the place, the mixed smell of food and urine...Lord have mercy!...One hour after we leave, Manda has to pee... so she gets up and goes to the bathroom. She comes back 2 seconds later...I ask how come she's done so fast. She tells me about the state of the toilet...I'll won't give any details here but you can easily imagine. So my poor Manda has to hold it for the rest of the trip. I won't be as courageous as her an hour later but let's not talk about it anymore...

So we get to DC at 11pm. Our ticket back to NY is for 3:30am.
We get to the lady who is going to show us the clothes around 11:30pm. We are in awe in front of what we see. And proud of all the talent coming from our Continent. So we see the clothes and ask for the price. Hehe. Before going to DC, we had an agreement with the designer that the clothes would be half priced for us. The lady says that he did not tell her anything so no discount for us. One dress for example is $250. How much are we supposed to spend to get enough samples to show to the buyers? I already told you what I think about those type of business practices so I'll just go ahead with the story.
Anyway. Your girls here don't have enough money to buy all the samples that night. So we leave from there, having put the clothes we want aside and telling the lady that we would send her the money when we get to NY. She says Ok.

So it's 2am. We are downtown DC. The bus is supposed to leave at 3:30am so we have an hour and a half to kill in the company of all the drunkards around. Because we don't feel safe, we get inside the only restaurant opened around to have a drink. We are tired and in a bad mood.
At 3:10 we get up to go get inside our favorite chinese bus. We get there. No bus. The only person there tells us the bus just left. Huh? It's not even 3:30am yet! Yup! But the bus still left at 3.
You can easily imagine the faces we were making. So the person tells us there is another bus leaving, go catch it.
That bus is in fact driving away. So we start running after it, screaming "please stop, please stop". The bus driver stop. We ask if we can use the ticket from the other company. Nope. "20 dollars, 20 dollars". We don't have 40 dollars in cash with us. There is an atm just across the street. So we tell him "please wait for us we just run to the atm and come back. please please please, pretty please". "20 dollars, 20 dollars" he replies. People inside the bus start laughing at us.
We ask at what time is the next bus, and they say 8am. If we take the 8am bus, we'll miss our 1pm flight to Miami. So we beg the bus driver to wait 5 minutes, the time for us to get 40 dollars in cash. He laughs, says no and just drives away.

So we sit right there on the sidewalk, silent, scared and miserable. We already know we are going to miss our plane back to Miami. What are we going to do? Where can we go?
We see a hotel sign 5 minutes away, so we walk there, hoping that we can connect to their wireless system and check on the earliest way to get back to NY.
Inside the hotel, we find that nice gentleman. We tell him our sad, sob story. He lets us use the internet for free and he offers us a discount price for the hotel room.
We've never been so happy to lay on fluffy beds. We just savor the moment. Manda and I deal with stress differently. She gets inside the bed and just sink into oblivion. I'm so wired I can't sleep.
One hour before the first bus is supposed to leave DC, we are at the station, waiting. They won't get us this time! I haven't slept, we can't remember the last time we ate, so we really are in a bad mood. During the trip back to NY, I change the time for our flights to Miami and put another dent on our already stretched budget.

When we get to NY, we barely have time to go take our stuff from the hostel, check out and go to the airport. The lady from DC calls us and start literally yelling at us because it's 12pm and have not sent her the money like we told her the night before. I start yelling back but my girl Manda is there to calm things down. I'm fuming...

Anyway...there you have the full account of that trip.
There's a lesson to be learned here: the cheapest way is not always the best.
When you have a startup, you don't have money to spend around so you want to save money wherever you can. But doing that can make you loose time and loose opportunities.
If we had taken the regular bus to DC, we would have been back on time to NY, thus save money on the hotel room and the airline change fees... And save on the aggravation too.

Anyway, now we know.