Tuesday, December 12, 2006
On the Road
The interesting thing about business travel is that it is the exact inverse of regular travel. You don't have to pay for any of it yourself, but it is practically guaranteed that nothing you do will be fun, unless you get a lot of enjoyment out of sitting in a tiny windowless conference room for hours or staying in a Best Western room all by yourself. Plus, exotic locales are often replaced by places like Duluth and Gary, Indiana. For some reason, it seems none of my clients ever get sued in Hawaii or the Bahamas.
I also note that business travel often causes colleagues to confide in you at an alarming rate. Given a few hours on a plane or in a car, people often feel compelled to share everything about themselves, from their awkward first experimentations with sex to the time their gym teacher said they had fat thighs in sixth grade. I personally find this exceedingly disturbing, as it was never my intention to become sorority sisters with the 63-year-old partner on my fraud action. Occasionally I'm tempted to make up some lies to play along (I once told a paralegal that I was a practicing Wiccan), but for the most part I'm just horrified.
I mention all of this because I went on a business trip yesterday, and within an hour I felt like we should be holding hands and singing around a campfire while someone named Darren played an acoustic guitar.
The interesting thing about business travel is that it is the exact inverse of regular travel. You don't have to pay for any of it yourself, but it is practically guaranteed that nothing you do will be fun, unless you get a lot of enjoyment out of sitting in a tiny windowless conference room for hours or staying in a Best Western room all by yourself. Plus, exotic locales are often replaced by places like Duluth and Gary, Indiana. For some reason, it seems none of my clients ever get sued in Hawaii or the Bahamas.
I also note that business travel often causes colleagues to confide in you at an alarming rate. Given a few hours on a plane or in a car, people often feel compelled to share everything about themselves, from their awkward first experimentations with sex to the time their gym teacher said they had fat thighs in sixth grade. I personally find this exceedingly disturbing, as it was never my intention to become sorority sisters with the 63-year-old partner on my fraud action. Occasionally I'm tempted to make up some lies to play along (I once told a paralegal that I was a practicing Wiccan), but for the most part I'm just horrified.
I mention all of this because I went on a business trip yesterday, and within an hour I felt like we should be holding hands and singing around a campfire while someone named Darren played an acoustic guitar.
