Travel - How does you handle it and what does your firm do to make it less painful?

Getting staffed on a travel assignment soon, rather excited since I was in the home office during my internship. From what I've heard, my firm is pretty good with travel, lots of perks, always a good hotel, generous reimbursement for meals.

I am wondering what others' travel experiences have been like? Horror stories? Kickass adventures? (I am guessing more of the former...)

Also, any tips for staying sane on long travel assignments? How do you handle it/unwind at the hotel?

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I am on a 1 week loan right now to an engagement in London but I had one international assignment a few months ago.

Good things about travel-

-if it's international or long domestic, usually first/business class -always nice hotels -pretty generous meal allowances -you get a TON of work done because that's all you're going to do in a new city -looks great when trying to market yourself -no kickass adventures (I was single at the time, so no flying a girlfriend in for the weekend)

The bad- -one missed flight can ruin your entire week -Mondays are horrible, sometimes you may have to fly out on Sunday night. Depending on the client demands you may have to stay till Friday at the client site despite the 4-1 model, which effectively ruins your weekend. Jet lag is pretty manageable you just are a zombie on Monday, catch up for the rest of the week. -you stop giving a shit after a while about nice dinners, nice bars, etc. just want to go home. -you really hate yourself for paying so much rent to live in Manhattan when you are there for an aggregate of about 4 days a month. -zero sex (at least for me, way too tired usually to try and game a girl in a new city when I have tons of work to look forward to) also hell on existing relationships.

Most of the bad things are client and partner dependent. If you get an asshole client/partner, you are fucked, I am talking fly out Sunday afternoon, don't go home for two weeks, when you do go home, fly out on a Friday night, long shitty hours so you can't even sightsee on the weekends. That's all I can think of for now.

 

^ lol

so true.

those small cash purchases turn into a large sum rather quickly.

on a light month --- my firm needs to reimburse me about $2k. Throw some international travel in there and it can go through the roof.

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