Inside the Head of a TV Junkie

I was on a business trip yesterday to St. Louis and the conference was over early. I did some quick checking on my phone to see when the next flight out of STL to PHX was on Southwest. I see that the next flight is at 12:35, which is a bonus because it gave me about an hour to get to the airport and switch the original flight (17:25). I get to the airport and head to the counter to switch my flight. BAD NEWS! Since the flight wasn’t late and my later flight wasn’t overbooked, I would have to pay the difference to get on this earlier flight. Granted, my company would be paying the difference but there are limits that you have to keep certain charges under. Sadly, the difference in the flight cost would far exceed the allowable limit. I found myself stuck at the airport until my flight later in the day. How can St. Louis have such a crappy airport? There is literally nothing to do or see here and, since my flight was more than 4 hours away, I was not able to check my bag. I was stuck on the wrong side of security until at least 13:25. The worst thing? The Wi-Fi at STL is not free. WTF. Why do airports not provide this for free for passengers?

Here is my list of things that I enjoy and dislike about business trips. The good stuff first:

• Making nice with the customer. Most of our customers love us so they are always fun to hang out with. There is usually alcohol involved here as well. Not a bad thing.

• Dinner on the company. When the company pays, it’s good.

• A hotel stay in a pretty decent place. Our company treats us well in this regard, no sharing of rooms either, another plus!

• Visiting the customer location and figuring out how they do business. Getting as much info on how the customer operates is exceedingly helpful in my line of work.

• Visiting new places. I get to visit new and different cities that I have never visited before.

Now for the bad:

• Usually short turn around times. I’ve yet to be at a customer location longer than 24 hours. Yikes!

• Sitting in the airport. Not fun!

• Visiting crappy places (yeah, I know I said new places could be fun, but sometimes they are hell.).

• Visiting with the customer – Yeah, again, I know it was in the positive list but sometimes this is also not fun. Sometimes the meet and greet can spill into the wee hours of the morning, making the next day’s business difficult to get through.

• Time zone changes. I get up at my normal time, fly to the new location, and then have to wait up 2 or 3 hours earlier than I normally wood. Fun? Not so much.

Those are my pros and cons about business travel. I haven’t done much of it but I’ve done enough. I do enjoy the whole experience overall and I wish I was able to do more. Do you have any business travel horror stories? Those are always fun.

The time is approaching when I take my spring vacation from work. Now, my employer gives me 10 vacation days and the ability to carry over that many from the previous year if I have any remaining. I could potentially have 20 days. Anyone who holds on to their vacation days like that is crazy. I don’t think I could survive not having a break from the daily rigors of my job.

When I graduated from college, I took a thirty-nine day trip to Europe with a really good friend. It was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done. The idea behind that trip was that it was most likely going to be a long time before I could have a nice long vacation once I started my life in the “real world.” I figured that I should get in one last hurrah. Well, my first job out of college afforded me more vacation time that I thought I was ever going to get being a new hire. I got 2 weeks up front with the ability to carry over just as many plus every holiday under the sun and some floating holidays thrown in for good measure. That first year I didn’t really use my vacation time to the fullest and only took one week (to visit my friend Stacey in Canada).

My next job, I wasn’t so lucky. I had to beg them to give me 2 weeks up front instead of waiting the standard year before being able to have vacation days. Throw in the fact that we hardly got any holidays, my vacation outlook was bleak. I lucked out in the fact that I had already planned on going to the Olympics in Torino, so that helped me to convince them to give me the days up front. After that trip in February 2006, I made a two fold promise to myself.

I will never take a job that doesn’t give me at least 2 weeks paid vacation up front and I will travel outside of the United States at least once a year.

Kind of an ambitious promise… but, so far, I’m doing really well. When I started this new job back in late 2006, I made my paid vacation time a condition of my employment and then proceeded to plan a trip in March 2007 to Scotland with my cousin. Now it’s 2008 and I have a trip planned to Ireland in just 3 weeks and a trip to Costa Rica in September. I’m doing pretty well.

You’re probably asking yourself, how does he do it? Well, let me just share a small tip on how you save for vacations. I have an account open with ING Direct that I auto deduct a set amount of $$ from my checking account every 2 weeks. I don’t use this cash for anything but travel related expenses. When you ignore an account, you’d be surprised at how quickly the $$ can grow. If you find yourself struggling to come up with the needed funds to take a break from life, give my tip a try. Anyone have other money saving tips?