Ugh, that sounds like a total nightmare, I'd have been crying in the walk-in for sure. Honestly 14 custom cakes in one weekend is a lot even when everything goes right, so don't be too hard on yourself.

What?! $87? I am sitting here staring at my screen like that cannot be real. I fly out of a pretty big airport too and the last time I looked at Austin it was well over $200, so you must have hit some kind of magic window. Maybe I have been doing this all wrong and my obsession with checking prices at lunch is the whole problem. I have tried Tuesday mornings and even set alerts, but nothing ever drops below like $150 for me. Now I am half tempted to set an alarm for 3am this Sunday just to see if the trick is real or if you just got lucky.

Those little family photos clipped to the cubicle walls were the whole thing for me. You knew Dave had twins before you ever talked to him, you knew when someone's kid lost a tooth. That stuff didn't happen in meetings, it just sat there at eye level while you walked to the printer. Open seating kills all of it because there's nothing to walk past and no reason to look. If you sat in the same spot for six years, that corner of the floor was yours, and everyone knew it. Now you grab whatever laptop is free and you're basically a ghost.