In my never ending quest to visit the all of the out-of-the-way corporate junket spots, I spent the good part of this week in the wilds of St. Charles, IL at the infamous Q Center.
Q Center is a corporate training center that Arthur Andersen created back in the day to train their new recruits. After Andersen ran into, ahhhh, troubles this century, they recast themselves as a self-contained corporate retreat.
Being a Chicago-native and Q-newbie, I looked at this trip as a simple boondoogle to catch up with my old hometown. Of course, the purpose of having events at these kinds of centers (think all inclusive cruise) is to keep employees isolated and therefore focused. And since St. Charles is about 2 hours outside Chicago city limits, they are pretty effective: No rental cars, no public transit and 5 miles from the nearest city.
While the Q Center's foo was strong, I proved stronger. Late on day two of the event, a co-hort of mine and I skipped a general session, bribed a cabbie to come get us and made our way into next town where they had two of my favorite Chicago-land eateries: Portillos and Giordano's Pizza.
Not wanted to waste my chance, I had tapas consisting of Chili dogs and crinkly fries at Portillos before adjurning to Giordanos to demolish a medium stuffed pepperoni and black olive pizza. The picture at right is the freshly delivered pie.
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