At the VEITH Symposium, which I attended briefly last week, while I foraged for lunch and sought out friends, I wandered into a crab trap (diagram above). Or more specifically, the WL Gore exhibit hall (below).
The coffee and bevarages featured all day, and the steak buffet at lunch, draws people in, like the smell of chicken to a crab, and once you have a plate of food, you then are kind of committed to moving forward into the conference room where they have a video feed of aortic symposium and tables to gobble your lunch.
Like a hand reaching into a crab trap to retrieve the catch, the reps wander in and chat you up, but thankfully only if they know you, which is fine because any hard sales tactic would trigger a fight or flight reflex that would ruin the generally chill atmosphere. There are exits to the left because, you know, fire codes, but they are small, and going out the way you came in risked bumping people juggling plates of their lunch, cups of their coffee. So you go in, sit down, and nibble, watch someone you vaguely know up on the big screen who just decided to go full head shave bald (why is that a thing?), check your phone and find out your friends are in another trap on the other side of the center. And their doors are closed, invitation only. Silly crabs.
A Surgeon's Notes 