At one point a few years back, I was traveling every week for about a year. These days it’s about once a month or so, but the trip can be for a few days or a few weeks.
She understands it, but she still misses me when I’m not around.
I’ve traveled to London, Hamburg and Amsterdam for work. Was supposed to go to Paris but ended up going to Seattle instead.
Typically I know ahead of time, but sometimes I have to change plans or extend trips. Like I might be in DC and suddenly get a call to spend a couple more days pitching to another client. Or I may stay an extra week to wrap up a project.
As I advance in my career, my role has gone from an individual contributor working on a team of other staff to project manager and now I’m getting more into a business development role. For example, my latest trip was basically following around a bunch of guys running clients on the West Coast and learn about what they do so I can run it on the East Coast.
My travel now is infrequent enough that I can typically plan for business trips like one might plan for a vacation. So maybe I might change my normal routine every now and then. But when I traveled every week, I didn’t have any routine. I saw my appartment only on weekends.
I spent the past year in a job with no travel at all and lost most of my status. Also, I said that my travel has become less frequent than in past years.
Aw. I like the Chicago airports, but being a resident, I never have to transfer at one, so I’m sure that helps.
Suggestion for Boston - fly into Manchester (NH), drive down. I have a friend who lives 15 minutes (on a good day) from Logan, 45 minutes from Manchester. I found Logan to be so crappy that I’d prefer the longer drive. Plus the car rental is right there in the airport, with the cars themselves in the parking garage next to the airport.
Question: Do you find that people who don’t travel on business tend to assume that you spend all of your time golfing and otherwise having fun while you’re away? I was just at a conference in Orlando a couple weekends ago; I landed less than two hours before the conference started, and the next day after the conference ended I hopped a shuttle to the airport and went home. They could have held it in most any other city and I wouldn’t have seen a difference between Orlando and the other city; it’s all airports and hotels.
I do not envy you, I hate this type of travel. I actually hate air travel in general.
I have tended to avoid jobs that require it so I only have to travel by air a few times a year for business at most. However, I frequently need to make 2 and 3 day car trips for my work.
If you are travelling alone, what do you do for dinner? I have found that despite being an independent woman I hate eating dinner in restaurants alone - lunch I am fine with as long as the restaurant isn’t fancy.
So when I travel I usually order room service or pick-up some take-out and take it back to my room. I don’t know why I developed this quirk, it’s not really a fear of being hit on or feeling self-conscious. I think it’s really more that I feel more comfortable in the room and also that I can eat slower and even “take a break” from my meal for a bit then come back to it.
My second question is, if you are male and eat alone in a restaurants…do other male businessmen ever hit on you? My late partner used to frequent the restaurant / bars in his business travel and frequently came back with tales of getting propositioned by men that appeared to be fellow business travelers. In his stories they also appeared to be straight and usually married, but if he started an extended conversation with another guy at the bar the guy seemed to frequently broach a suggestion as to how they could kill a little time.
I always thought his appearance triggered such enquiries ( he was totally straight but seemed to set off a lot of gaydar) but is this more common than I realized?
Jesus, this is my biggest pet peeve about traveling. I can put up with the plane delays and the sometimes rude and incompetent security staff and the marginally comfortable lounge seats and the drinks that cost 30% more in the airport than they cost anywhere else, but the people who fail to listen to the TSA agent who is repeatedly yelling that they need to separate their liquids and gels and put them in the 1 quart ziplock bag, remove their shoes and belt, pull out laptops, et cetera drive me absolutely fucking insane. I’m there with my stuff all arranged, ready to go through security, put myself back together, and go find a bar reasonably close to my gate, and then some utter pinhead has a meltdown about how he’s being subjugated to some special torture because he tried to shove a giant-sized hard suitcase that will never fit in an overhead bin through the airport scanner that happens to be full of hand lotion and razor blades. Seriously, have you never travelled in the past eight years, and haven’t bothered to check the TSA website or clicked on the links from the site which you checked in on in order to understand what you need to go in order to comply with the well-publicized security regulations? My estimation of the public intelligence drops by about eight IQ points every time I travel.
I so wish this were actually feasible, but at least in my job it just doesn’t work; in order to be heard and to drive the discussion in the area that it is needed, you have to be in the room and forcibly demanding attention. I would much rather be sitting at my desk keeping up with e-mail and browsing the Internet during the bulk of the meeting that doesn’t pertain to my discipline or area of management, but it just isn’t really possible to direct a meeting or confront a speaker when you are just a small window on a screen or a voice on a conference phone.
A specific pair of questions for the o.p.: what is your favorite airline, and which airline will you fly only if it is a life-and-death situation?
froths at the mouth God, yes. I don’t expect that people who pack a soda in their carry-on bag* are terrorists or anything, but I tend to take stuff like that as evidence that they Suck At Flying in other ways and may find ways to make me/other passengers/flight attendants miserable.
A couple cut off my husband and I in the security line on one trip - we “took the outside lane” when going around the corner in the roped-off line, and they cut ahead of us - and we watched as they proceeded to break a whole lot of TSA/local airport rules: jackets on, shoes on, belt on, liquids not out, etc. After enough of those problems, they got yanked aside for a full check, probably on suspicion of being clueless travelers. For all I know they might have been dumb enough to carry on pressurized butane for a lighter or something, so it might well have been for some good other than pure schadenfreude.
*Yes I mean you, dude flying out of Vegas who apparently forgot this rule due to the hangover and was being a whiny emo to someone on your cell phone about how meeeaaaaan they were to confiscate your nausea-calming Sprite. You can buy another one (for a higher price) about 20’ after the security area - and by the way, I’m glad you weren’t on my plane because I so don’t need to hear someone ralfing. Next time, please curtail your drinking the night before departure a tad.
As a fairly frequent business traveler myself (about once a month for 3 or 4 days), I’ll add my answer to the “elite status” question that I’ve seen a few times.
Speaking for myself, all of my trips are domestic flights here in the US. When I have to go someplace, I usually have short notice (about 2 or 3 days) and I’d like to depart and arrive when I want. So I’ve found that no one airline schedule fits my requirements. So I’d end up with half a dozen airlines each with 10,000 miles or something. Since it takes usually around 25,000 miles to gain elite status, I don’t even bother anymore. When I flew 3 or 4 times to South Korea each year, then yes it was worth the extra effort to stick with one airline because 2 trips earned me elite status. So now I just use Southwest for most of my flights…or Airtran. Southwest doesn’t have business, but I can book the “business elit” seats or whatever they are…which lets me be one of the first 15 people on the plane. So I pick the seat I want. Airtran has same day business upgrades that are between $50 and $100 per leg. So I’ll fly them and just pay the upgrade fee out my pocket depending on how the trip has gone.
Now I do use the same rental car company. So far I’ve never flown into an airport where they weren’t located, and becoming the elite member with them means I get a better selection of cars at the same ‘economy’ price my company will pay. Plus I accrue free days that I can use for a road trip vacation if I like.
Not to the extent you described, but I do find if I am sitting long enough in a hotel or restuarant bar, some traveler will likely strike up a conversation. It’s typically not a Playboy playmate on her way to a porn convention.
Without confirming or denying which firm I work for, I am aware of the song you are referring to. It is my understanding that no one at the firm in question is to ever speak of it.
