Some people get really excited by the idea of travelling for work. "Oh, your job sent you to Orlando? Oh how cool, I never get to travel for work!" On the surface, that might not sound overly ridiculous. Trust me when I say the following: it is completely ridiculous.
The vast majority of people who think business travel is cool don't do any business travel. The people who DO travel for work and still like it are either about to get a free flight with frequent flier miles or clinically insane. I can't believe companies can market travel and somehow people think those jobs should be MORE desirable.Other than maybe the DMV, I can't think of a location where everyone is so uniformly stressed out as at the airport. It's just such an unpleasant environment. Everyone is unbelievably tense, everyone is about to miss their flight, or lost a bag, or lost a kid, or their reservation wasn't in the system, or the guy at the counter was a prick, or they can't believe they have to throw out their "liquid" hair gel, and why is that guy going through all my stuff like that, he thinks he can do whatever we wants because he's security, etc. Even when nothing particularly bad happens to you, the negative vibes are contagious. If you leave even a 2 foot space in line between you and the guy in front of you, everyone behind you starts freaking the hell out. And even if you're packed in advance, on time, and your flight is on time (an incredible trifecta itself), the best you would say about your time in the airport is, "yeah, nothing horrible happened - I got really lucky." When you're on vacation, you're so fired up to go wherever you're going - you're like this random absurd island of happiness amidst all the fury. And believe me, the business travellers who see you and your shit-eating grin and your oversized bag for your second-rate golf clubs - they hate you. Oh, they hate you.
Then there's actually being on the plane. Some people can't sleep on planes, which is truly awful. One of my personal problems is that it always sucks to fall asleep on a plane, wake up with your mouth open and realize you've drooled a little bit. Does anyone know a way to combat this? It doesn't happen to me every time, but it's kind of gross and sort of embarrassing, even though everyone around is a stranger.
There's a lot of other negative aspects to business travel (food, bed, getting lost, to name a few), but detailing all the outstanding items could take days, and I can't stay up that late since I had to travel for work today. And I didn't even change time zones. Hopefully I won't have to do that again anytime soon.
7 comments:
you got to travel for your job?? that's so cool!
=D
i think the biggest misconception about business travel is that you can actually enjoy the sights of the city, when in reality, all you see of the city is what you see on the way to whatever business matter brought you there, and then back to the airport. maybe if you're lucky, you'll get a nice dinner out on the town, but you'll probably order room service since you're supposed to be working.
where's your post about dog rentals?
Well, the problem is that companies are cheap to their low-level employees. They send them out somewhere to complete a job in the minimal amount of time necessary and expect them to work 12-16 hour days. There's barely enough time to eat, so there's definitely not enough time to play.
yeah you just had to travel for the day but how about everyone who travels from mon.-thurs. living in some posh five-star hotel, eating and expensing ridiculously expensive meals, taking cushy cars, AND getting frequent flyer miles for being in LONDON. and stays for the weekend. vacation for FREE. don't be a hater and ruin it for everyone like me.
Orlando??? Sweet!
I see you have some consultant friends among you too.
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