Stinger missile faux pas

The plenary morning session takes place in Hall B, and, like everything else in Las Vegas, Hall B is enormous.
We all traveled to this desert oasis of opulence and kitsch to be educated in the mysterious and amorphous world of Supply Chain Management. I will leave Las Vegas having learned nothing new whatsoever about this numinous discipline.
No doubt this is due to my lackadaisical attitude, for everyone I meet there speaks highly of the event.
All I can remember is one of the speakers at the general session. He was a consultant with an ugly South-African accent who intoned that we had to stop our ‘north-south' approach to Supply Chain Management and that ‘east-west’ thinking was surely the future of the industry which would bring a cornucopia of blessings to our bottom-lines.
His voice rose in excitement and volume throughout his speech, and after a full half hour of relentless platitudes and unabashed vacuous piffle -for which he seems to be well rewarded- he ended with a keen new insight into the ways of corporate management when he declared, in stentorian voice, that all the large companies that were wise enough to meet with him have now decided on the radical new strategy of “listening to their customers’ needs”.
I know what you are thinking; in a rational universe this pretentious fraud would be booed off the stage for spoiling everyone’s breakfast,but instead a lukewarm applause from the audience was the response.

For sales people like me these events are excellent opportunities to seduce otherwise well-adjusted human beings into buying our service. This trolling for new customers is to be done later that day during hectic series of 15 minute sessions with pre-selected companies in a bizarre ritual which includes a bell announcing the pending end to each frenetic episode of corporate speed-dating.
As it turns out, half of the scheduled suitors-to-be don’t bother showing up.
I don’t blame them; they are here for the free booze which is the traditional finale to every business event and this is a nice, paid-for, break away from their dreary offices.
During the second day of speed-dating, a fat little man with an Indian accent walks up to our booth and, while I am in conversation with someone else, asks if we can “do” his meeting now, instead of the scheduled time-slot on our third and last day, because he has an early plane to catch tomorrow. This would be considered rude behavior in most settings but as his badge indicates that he is a VP at a very large purveyor of carbonated, flavored, sugar-water, it is obvious to all right-thinking business people that he is entitled to dispense with such trivial details as common courtesy.

Hall B is filled with dozens of round tables ringed by unassigned seats.
The waiters drift silently between the tables,filling coffee mugs and pouring orange juice. I am fascinated by the waiters at these events. It is as if they are invisible to all but me,and I don't understand why nobody pays attention to them.

One of the tables is only half-filled with a quartet of properly tagged corporate citizens and I take a seat next to a 40-ish woman after she acknowledged my formal request to join her troupe for the breakfast session.
Not bothering to read her badge I ask who she works for.
She explains that all four of them work for Raytheon.
I am doing all right up to now; I am wearing a suit and the small-talk at my chosen table is proceeding according to protocol.
As I imagine that her company has many divisions I ask for which one she works.
“The stinger division”, she replies.
This is the moment where my ruse fails and I am revealed as the imposter that I am.
I blurt out: “I always wonder how easy it must be for a terrorist to take one of those Stingers we left in Afghanistan and stand near a US airport and take one of the airplanes down during take-off”.
The Raytheon woman erupts in a brief paroxysm of hysterical laughter and then abruptly turns to one of her colleagues to discuss less unpleasant matters.

I realize my impudence.
One is never to question the actual result of the labors of others.
What matters is whether one is part of the tribe.
I finish my breakfast in silence, contemplating the code I broke, knowing that I don’t fit in and never have.