Charisma, confidence, and why they matter

alternate title: "How to go anywhere and do anything"

My poor, neglected blag… There are quite a few posts I have been meaning to finish and post here, but to be honest the novelty of getting home and NOT having homework that must be immediately completed has still not worn off.  Plus, it’s a little intimidating to write that first post after months of inactivity; I felt like I needed to wait until I had something big to write about.   But now, well… I have something. 

It all started when some good friends of ours acquired VIP passes to the Portland Brew Fest and kindly put our names on the list as well.  We really wanted to go, but between running our first obstacle race the day before and other weekendly duties piling up, it looked like even if we did go, we would only make it to the tail end.  So we decided not to go.  Or rather, we almost did.  We actually made the first decision that set in motion the series of bizarre and wonderful events that the coming evening had in store.  We made up our minds went to the brewfest.  

We met up with some friends there (not the same people who gave us the passes) and began imbibing all manner of delectable fermentables, standing in lines, enjoying good conversation, and generally having a first-rate Sunday evening.  Then, when everything closed up at 7:00, we walked back to the car, had a quiet evening at home, and went to bed.  Actually, that’s a lie too.  What actually happened was a series of charisma checks, and we all got natural 20s on each one.

If you’re not familiar with the term “Natural 20”, it is a term from tabletop role-playing games, and it means rolling a 20 using a 20-sided die.  It is the perfect roll—the highest value you can get, even before applying any modifiers or bonuses.  It usually results in something like killing an enemy with a single critical blow, or noticing a tiny lever that reveals a huge treasure. There are exceptions, but it usually safe to equate rolling a natural 20 with automatic success at whatever action you are attempting.  And for a definition of charisma in the sense I'm using the word, here's a quote straight from the D&D wiki:

Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting.

Anyway, there we were at the ‘fest, and things were winding down.  Beth spotted some guys in suits, which struck everyone as odd, since 

(1) this was at the Brew Festival 

(2) in Portland Oregon 

(3) on a Sunday.  

After speculating as to why all three of these conditions were so blatently ignored, Beth went to talk to them and find out what was going on.  

As it turns out, they were in Portland for a Brewer’s Convention, which though it sounds similar is actually nothing like the Brew Fest.  I still don’t know what the actual purpose is, but the people who go are all reps from all the US macro-breweries (think Anheuser-Busch, Coors, etc) and commercial brewing equipment/chemical suppliers.  Anyway, we actually all hit it off quite well with these two random executives from halfway across the country, whom were probably old enough to be our parents.  As things were ending at the ‘fest, they were still looking for things to do and see in Portland.  They asked us where they could buy a good steak, and through what I can only speculate were Jedi mind tricks, we somehow convinced them to go to Bailey's taproom and buy us a few rounds instead.

So there we all are, Beth and I, our two friends, plus the execs.  And the beer is flowing—flowing from what has to be one of the finest beer selections of any bar I’ve ever been in Portland, no less—but they are still working: They were asking us questions about our demographics: What beer do we buy?  What do we look for when we shop for beer? Where do we usually drink… They were basically doing market research.  And while I didn’t mind answering a few questions, the group somehow managed to quickly and effectively turn this conversation around completely reverse the direction of the dialogue; it wasn’t long before they were convinced that they owed us something for our time.  

I suggested that the convention afterparty they had mentioned—about which I had been trying to pry information out of them for the past 15 minutes-- was as good a way as any to make it up to us, and so after they exchanged some words, they told us “We can probably get you in” and we were off.

10 minutes later, there we are: riding the elevator to the top floor of the Hilton.  Sure, we didn’t have passes, and we didn’t have badges like everyone else, but we did have t-shirts, flip-flops, plenty of alcohol-fortified confidence, and a stellar track record for the night already.  I think my exact words—as I looked the bouncers straight in the eyes and walked right in after the execs that we had met only an hour or so earlier—were “Good evening, gentlemen.”  

And there we sat, enjoying the view of downtown Portland at night, dumbfounded by our luck and awestruck by the bounty it had yielded. The bar only had crappy, weak piss-beer like Bud, Coors, and Miller, there were a few gems mixed in like the occasional Blue Moon (A Budweiser beer, if you didn’t know…) but it was all completely free.  And if I’m being honest with myself, I think we were probably past the point of… well… tasting at that point anyway.

That all really happened (I have 3 witnesses). And I guarantee that on any given night, any one of us—hell, pretty much anyone—could pull off more or less the same just thing.  First of all, there have got to be events like this (large generic conferences, otherwise unremarkable save ample supplies of drinks and food) practically every night of the week if you know where to look.  Like the top floor of hotels, for example.  But more importantly: Absolutely everyone is shamefully unperceptive.  I don’t know what causes this—whether it is conflict avoidance, blind trust, or something else, but people are so shockingly unobservant that as long as you simply act like you belong somewhere, you’re practically invisible.  I used to think that it took more than that—I thought you had to look the part—but it looks like I was wrong.  All it takes is a little confidence.