Work Travel is a Privilege: My View on Work Travel
 

In my first job out of college a wise colleague taught me an important lesson: work travel is a privilege. At the time I was working on mostly travel accounts at a PR agency and we were getting ready to launch a new cruise ship. I was focused on securing media to attend the preview launch and over the weeks of pitching, came to know the features of this ground-breaking ship inside and out. My conversations with the journalists were going well and I was quickly filling up spots for the media.

I became attached to the product, and to the relationships with the reporters, which only ended in disappointment when I found out there would not be a spot for me, the most junior member of the team, to attend the launch. I understood – really, I did – but deep down it still hurt. My colleague told me that work travel was something that had to be earned; it was a privilege. After all, I had only been working in the real world for three months. What did I expect?! [Ok, fine. Insert your entitled millennial-in-the-work-place comment here].

There’s a happy ending to this story. It didn’t come in 2010, but in 2011 when we were getting ready to launch the next ship in the series. And this time my hard work was met with what I thought was the ultimate reward: a spot on the ship! Little did I know, or would ever expect, it was the beginning of what would become a career laden with work travel.

It was around this time another colleague and friend introduced the word boondoggle into my vocabulary. A word which I actually take much offense to. Why, you may ask? Work travel may be a privilege, but at the end of the day, it is still work. Securing my ticket on the ship didn’t mean I was actually going on a cruise vacation; work travel is not a vacation, although the social media pictures may suggest otherwise.

Sure, I absolutely love some of the perks that come with work travel: seeing parts of the USA and the world that I may never have had a chance to see, meeting new people/colleagues from all around the world, getting out of the office from time to time and visiting my company’s offices in different parts of the world, watching the upgrade list to see if you’ve made the cut, and as you all probably know, the thrill I get when reaching a new level of status on Delta.

But, there are some things I despise: back-to-back travel sprees that last weeks (or even months) at a time, spending less time with family and friends, excessive travel that has broken up relationships and made dating super hard, interruption from normal eating routines, and missing important life events like the wedding of a friend, and yes, even the birth of my niece.

A typical day on the road consists of a 5/5:30am wakeup call to sneak in a workout before a breakfast meeting, a full day of being ‘on’ in whatever the trip may entail (e.g., meetings, trainings, etc.), team dinners followed by drinks which gets you back to the hotel with an hour or so left in the day to catch up on all the work you’ve missed from the day when all you really wanted to do after 5pm was shower, order room service and get into bed before 9pm knowing you have to wake up and do the whole thing all over again the next day.

I quickly learned on that first business trip that if I was going to take another work trip again (ha!), I’d have to learn how to find a better balance. So that is what I’ve been striving to do for the last 7 years; find a better balance. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

So why put all of this in writing? First off, it is something I feel very strongly about. I typically am met with ‘you’re so lucky’ and ‘I wish I had your job.’ I wouldn’t disagree. I think I have one of the best jobs in the world, but I am the firmest believer that work travel is a privilege. It’s hard to admit this publicly, but it really does bother me sometimes when people think it’s all fun and games, which is why I felt the need to put this out there. Those who travel often will get where I’m coming from. Those who don’t are probably rolling their eyes. And those who I work with are probably wondering, what is this girl trying to say?!

I guess that is the beauty of starting a blog. My blog. My opinions. My blank pages to ramble. So, that’s that. J

Why now? I am fresh off of two amazing business trips from July – the first two in my new role. And my next two posts will highlight the way I found balance this time in two amazing locations: Belgium and Singapore/Myanmar. It will focus mostly on what I did in my own time, by arriving a bit early (on my own time and dime) over the weekend each time, so I wanted  to be super clear on where I stand on the work travel subject since it is something I feel very strongly about.

First up…Belgium!