I Stink At Being a Lobbyist

Today was the day that the District 5 Ambassadors from the American Cancer Society (ie…Suzy and 6 other people) were to make what the ACS called our “August Recess Activity.” This “activity” was to visit Congressmen Istook’s OKC office and drop off a copy of our 2015 Cancer Promise Letter. This letter summarizes all the things that we will be lobbying for when we go to Washington DC in September.

My district team decided to do what is called a Rolling Walk-in Visit. This meant that starting at 8 a.m. and every hour after that until they close, a member of the team would stop by his office, hand them a purple balloon, and drop off a copy of the letter in hopes that maybe Congressman Istook would get really annoyed and finally sign the letter.

I was scheduled for 10:00 and I got to go with another team member who also took her son. We drove all the way downtown. Paid for 30 minutes of parking and spent less than 5 minutes talking to the most unhelpful staff person. Got back in the car and drove back to Edmond. I was gone from the office a total of 40 minutes. 35 of which was car time. It was hard to not feel like a failure. Even though we knew the visit would probably go that way we were still hoping that maybe just maybe someone in that office would take more of an interest in hearing what we had to say.

How sad that I wasted a perfectly good outfit (high heels and all) on a five minute visit with a lady who didn’t even feel like I deserved to know her name. Let me tell you, they will all be sorry when they see me in Washington DC. I have been fine tuning my strategy for months now. Now I just need to talk Tammy and Bryon into letting my strategy go to Washington with me for a week.

The morning was not a complete loss however. Zach (my team member’s son) got to see a homeless person. I think that was the highlight of his day since he talked about it all the way back to Edmond.