 |
| This is not what you look like after a 6 AM flight on Monday. |
In the course of almost four years with the company, I was
staffed in: Orange County CA, Wichita KS, Santa Fe NM (with weeks in Framingham
MA, Tampa FL, Vienna VA, Montrovia CA, and of course NYC), and Walnut Creek,
CA. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “that sounds awesome! Free trips
around the country! Expense accounts!”
But it is not awesome. Traveling for work is NOT like
traveling for pleasure. You spend more time in airports than in your own bed.
You live in creepy hotels (all hotels are creepy). And let me assure you, a
conference room in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC, looks exactly the same as that
conference room in your home office. And, think about where offices of large
corporations are generally located. Unless you’re really lucky, you’re in an
office park just outside of Boston or
DC. And the client spends thousands to bring you on site – you’re not leaving
that conference room at 5 PM. You’re working until 7 PM on a good night, and you’re
not going to see much outside of those office walls. Still not convinced? Here
are a few more things that suck about traveling for a living.
You will have no
life: Consultancies will tout a 3-4-5 schedule in their recruiting
activities. You’ll hear, “you know, I travel for a living, but it’s quite
reasonable. We follow a 3-4-5- schedule. That means 3 days on the client site,
the fourth night at home, and the 5th day in your home office.”
Meaning, you fly out Monday morning, fly home Thursday night, and are expected
to be in your company’s home office on Friday. Sounds reasonable to a young
go-getter, straight out of college, right?
However, 3-4-5 is really like 3-.5-0. You’ll spend 3 days at
your client site hating life and counting down until you can go home. You’ll
spend half a night at home when your delayed flight finally arrives. That's IF the partner on your project has not decreed that everyone stay on site 5 days a week. And you’ll
spend 1.5 days at home trying to enjoy life. You will not go into your office
on Friday because you’re exhausted and the thought of talking to other
miserable consultants sounds absolutely horrible. Co-worker friends? Not with this model. And while
you’re home, you’re trying to make the most of it, but really, you’re dreading
your Monday 6 am flight. Your friendships will suffer when you only have 2
possible days a week on which to see people, and you would rather spend those
on the couch watching Bravo (how in the hell do 90% of hotels STILL not have
Bravo?) and snuggling with your dog. Crying every Sunday night – normal or not
normal?
The only reason I maintained a relationship in these 4 years
was that I traveled with sir good hair to Orange County for 2 years. In fact,
this traumatic time may have sealed our bond. Remember Keanu and Sandra in
Speed? Kind of like that. In the time when we weren’t traveling together, I
pretty much only saw him when I was home on weekends. Friendships: crumbled.
Hotels are creepy:
I slept in the same bed as Dennis Rodman. Not at the same time, weirdo. I know
this because I lived in the same hotel in Costa Mesa, CA for almost 2 years.
That meant that the whole hotel staff knew me by name, and one week alerted me
to the fact that Mr. Rodman was staying on my floor. They even told me which
room. I definitely had that room before
and after the fact. Try feeling sanitary after that. Add to that the dumps I
stayed in during the dead of winter in Wichita, KS, the Embassy Suites in
Irvine that smelled damp and had murals of monkeys in turbans in the restaurant,
and Dateline horror stories about hotel bacteria, and you suddenly have the
urge to bathe in antibacterial hand gel. On the upside, I can identify which
hotel is hosting the pageants featured on Toddlers and Tiaras based solely on
the tapestries and carpet patterns.
Airports and
airplanes are the worst places in the world: You will witness the absolute
worst elements of human behavior. I once listened to a man projectile vomit for
the entire flight from Albuquerque, NM to Las Vegas, NV. US Airways employees
will look straight through you as you try to arrange passage on a later flight
after your connecting flight left 10 minutes early and stranded you at PHX for
ten hours. You will jockey for space in the boarding area, predicting when they
will call for Premier Executives to board, because suddenly this matters to
you. And you will see a man let his dog poop on the terminal carpet without
cleaning it up.
You will fear for
your life: Speaking of airports and airlines, do you remember that time the
pilot put the landing gear down at 30,000 ft because the plane was overheating?
Or the time the turbulence was so bad that people were actually screaming? No?
You don’t fly every week. Fly 2-4 times a week and your odds of experiencing something
horrifying just stack up. That’s my stance. Have you ever flown out of John
Wayne Airport in OC? They have a noise reduction procedure that involves taking
off at full speed, then cutting the throttle so that it feels like you’re in
free-fall. I did it every week for 2 years, and it probably took 5 years off my
life. And given my profession, I have the chance to look behind the curtain at
many companies that you would think have their shit together. Here’s a secret:
people are people everywhere, and people are dumb. Once you see planes being
built by the guy next store, who can have good days and bad days, you’re no
longer confident in so-called experts, like, say, pilots.
You will trick
yourself into thinking that the airline and hotel points are worth it: One of
the primary things I heard soon-to-quit traveling consultants say was “man,
traveling sucks, but I really don’t want to give up my status.” I said this
myself. Sure, it’s cool that I once had top-tier status at 3 hotel chains,
elite status on 2 airlines, and have not paid for a hotel room or plane ticket
in about 3 years. But you forget when you’re wrapped up in this travel business
that the benefits of elite status do not even come close to 1) not traveling
constantly and 2) having an actual, emotionally fulfilling home life. Sure, you
get a slightly larger room up-grade, or even the presidential suite a few times
a year. Maybe they put a cheese plate and a bottle of wine in your room when
you check in. But, I, personally, would rather pay for that 8 dollar bottle of
wine and 2 dollar hunk of cheese, and eat it in my arm chair with my dog in my
lap. Call me crazy. I have a lot of friends that are still in consulting and
will post #humblebrags about their status in a somewhat steady stream, and
though I’m glad that there is a bright spot in an otherwise horrible travel
schedule, I sometimes want to shake them and say, “get a hold of yourself! It’s
not worth it!”
You’ll get fat: I
think one of the key tips nutritionists, doctors, and trainers will give you
is, “create a schedule, build healthy habits, and plan ahead.” None of that is
possible if you’re traveling. You’re working late. You could get rolled off your project at any time, so don't pre-pay for any trainer sessions. If you’re traveling across
time zones, your morning workouts become more and more of a pipe dream. And have you seen the average hotel "gym"? You
eat all your meals through restaurants and airports. On top of that, you will
not have groceries in your home, because you stopped buying them because they
go bad when you’re too tired to cook. I didn’t realize how horrible this habit
was until recently, when we started this paleo thing, and started cooking
almost all our meals at home. Finally my taste buds “reset” or something, and I
am back to actually preferring our home cooked meals to restaurant food. I won’t
get into the effects of massive stress on your fat storage. Let’s just say, not
good.
So, my advice to anyone who thinks that traveling for work
sounds kind of sexy is: don’t be fooled. And if you do give it a shot, I’m sure
that the first time you’re deathly ill in a hotel room, begging room service to
bring you Nyquil, you’ll wish that you had a family member or loved one around.
Or maybe it’ll be the first time you have 3 flights in 2 days, and a double ear
infection. Regardless, there will be a point at which enough is enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment