Traveling for work or pleasure in our international economy has been implicated in the spread of the novel 2019 coronavirus outbreak. Now, most of the world has implemented social distancing and travel bans to "flatten the curve." In the longer term, business travel may never be the same.
Why I was traveling for work
I am currently a Data Scientist supporting personalized healthcare initiatives in oncology. Specifically, I help my colleagues at various affiliate country offices around the world build strategies to generate and utilize local real world data.
A key component of this job is to interact with these colleagues and their external stakeholders. To do this, I traveled out of town for 10 weeks over the latter half of last year. That meant that I was away from home over a third of the time once I started the job in July.
When a coworker heard that I traveled for work, she commented, "Oh, you have such a glamorous job!" I had a skeptical chuckle when I heard this comment.
Don't get me wrong - I really love the global health aspect of my job. In fact, I am realizing my public health dream. I get to do work that will have an impact on populations around the world.
Plus, I sometimes sleep incredibly well in a hotel bed, away from all the nagging tasks at home that I should probably outsource.
Traveling for work is not glamorous
But let's face it. Traveling for work can be really hard. My sister worked in management consulting for a few years, and she told me that constant travel can be a major factor for burnout. Between the time zone skipping and the dehydrating environment of airplanes, travel can be grueling. My work travel is definitely not very glamorous.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been grounded since early February. At first, I was disappointed that my international business meetings were cancelled.
No longer could I cajole my colleagues to consider and accept my point of view over dinner. The ease with which I could gauge everyone's body language reaction to a proposal was out the door. There’s nothing quite like the camaraderie among a team of coworkers that results from furiously preparing and managing a tough stakeholder meeting.
However, as our recent guest post suggested, having gratitude is healthy for surviving this pandemic. At this uncertain time, I am grateful to be grounded at home. Reflecting back on my experiences, here are some of my biggest challenges and inconveniences when traveling for work.
7 Challenges of traveling for work
1. Delays and cancellations.
I've had my fair share of hours spent at the airport waiting for a delayed flight to Zurich. As luck would have it, after all other flight options to Europe have taken off, the airline cancels my flight. Then, I spend the following night trying to express my argument coherently as the only participant dialed into the all-day in-person workshop.
Then there's the stress of needing to bolt out of my airplane seat as soon as the seat belt sign turns off so that I might have a chance to make a connection. I also remember a flight delay that resulted in missing the express train, leaving no other option but the local train that made every single stop. Or miss the last train altogether.
I try to only take my luggage on board as carry-on if possible. Plenty of colleagues have arrived on the first day of the meeting dressed quite casually because the airline temporarily misplaced their luggage. Or they had to go shopping and buy new outfits. We laugh and commiserate about searching for new underwear in a foreign city!
2. Jet lag.
Last fall, I zigzagged from home on the US east coast to the west coast, then to Europe, the Middle East, and South America. In that span of five weeks, my mind and body were not always in the same time zone.
I was just always tired at the wrong time of day, usually when I needed to be alert in a meeting. And in the middle of the night, I would wake up starving for a meal. I’m usually armed with a stash of melatonin and Benadryl for the nights and caffeinated beverages for the day.
Jet lag has a terrible effect on how much rest and the quality of rest that I get. This then bleeds into other aspects of life, including home life once I return (see #6 below).
3. Airplane/hotel food is bad.
Okay, cooking does not bring me joy. So I actually relish not having to cook my own meals when traveling for work. However, the rubbery fare served up on airplanes often makes me wish I brought my own sandwich.
Then there are the evenings when I think I'll be productive by working through dinner with the hotel room service. Inevitably, room service dinner food is sub-par, sometimes too salty, other times too bland. Yes, first-world problems. But hey, I'm being grateful today.
4. No time to see anything.
My mother-in-law is always asking me if I enjoyed the cities I visited on my work travels. My response: blank stare. Because I’m trying to remember if I even looked outside my hotel window during my last trips. It's usually a toss-up whether the view will be amazing (Vancouver, Dubai) or a spectacular view of the rooftop air conditioner (Rome, London - see photo).
Between all-day meetings, prepping for those all-day meetings, and evening work events, there leaves little time or energy. Even on lighter days, my schedule likely includes a conference call with colleagues on another continent at the most inopportune time.
In years past, I would have felt pressure or guilt about not seeing anything except the office or hotel. Or I would have tried to add extra days to the trip for my own tourism. No guilt anymore these days, and certainly no extra days to spare now, because of this next one...
5. Logistical complexities at home.
Prior to becoming a mom, I did not fully appreciate the work travel difficulties experienced by my coworkers who are parents (or pet owners too!).
Traveling for work means tackling a checklist of logistical complexities before leaving home. Someone needs to spend the nights with the kid(s). Shop and prepare for meals ahead of time. Pickup or dropoff from school/daycare must be arranged. Emergency back-ups for all of these responsibilities need to be placed on high-alert. Call up the grandparents from the reserves.
Those with a stay-at-home partner rush back after traveling for work to relieve that spouse of the overwhelming load of solo parenting. Dual-career couples negotiate juggling the extra load of solo childcare when co-parenting was normally already a precarious house of cards.
I feel exhausted just thinking about this. Speaking of tired...
6. Little rest, and the consequences upon returning home.
I cackle enviously when people say to me, "Jet lagged? At least you'll get lots of rest over the weekend." People who say that don't have kids. They certainly don't have high-needs or special-needs kids. Maybe they have angelic children who sleep through the night and never throw tantrums or demand your undivided attention every waking hour.
Or, they're just mean. But, I am grateful that this reminds me that it's actually pretty good to be working from home right now.
Anyway, traveling for work often meant that I would fly out on a Sunday night or Monday morning and go straight into work events. Then, after an exhausting week, I fly home on a Friday afternoon and immediately pick up parenting duties. For busy parents, weekends are not for resting, and it’s really challenging if you had jet lag and didn't get much high-quality sleep while traveling for work.
7. Safety and security concerns.
I expect that most of the places I travel to for work are fairly safe. But there have been a few incidents that made me wonder if I should heed more closely the US State Department's travel website.
I felt quite special when my Brazilian colleagues arranged a car to pick me up from the Sao Paulo airport. The email described it as an "armoured vehicle." I remember thinking it must have been a translation error. To my surprise, my driver confirmed, "Don't worry, in Sao Paulo, there are only little guns. These windows are bullet-proof, so you are ok!" My colleague followed up later that day to inquire about my safety and remind me that I should not wander far from the hotel.
A few years ago, I met up with a friend in Brussels for the weekend after my work meeting in Lisbon finished. This just happened to be the weekend when the Paris bombers were discovered hiding out in Brussels. As the city was in lockdown, we spent the weekend holed up in the hotel room, watching the stressful news unfold on TV, and consuming the chocolates and beer we stocked up on from the lobby level grocery. I guess I can't blame work travel for this security scare. But the company's travel department did contact me to make sure that I would be taking my scheduled home-bound flight on Sunday morning.
Last thoughts
I wondered if my reflections on the difficulties of traveling for work were too silly to share during a time when many of us are home-bound or are essential workers who are at-risk of COVID-19. During any other time, I think this post could be a helpful reminder to those who are considering a job with extensive travel that traveling for work is not always much fun.
I am privileged to have a job that gives me the opportunity to apply my scientific skills to global health. But I am also thankful that traveling for work has paused for now, especially during this time of unprecedented uncertainty.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected many aspects of our lives, possibly permanently. This likely includes work-related travel. Our current experiences with video conferencing and other communication technologies will influence future corporate decisions about the need for traveling for work.
What do you think will happen with work-related travel? Do you have any crazy work-related travel stories? Share your predictions and stories in the comments.