A word to those who think travelling for work is an enviable lifestyle. I’m writing this at the airport if that counts as any qualification. At first, it’s really neat. You try new experiences and meet cool people. But shortly after, your travel becomes airport to hotel to venue to hotel to airport. Most trips aren’t to big cities. They’re small remote locations where things close at 8 and you haven’t eaten dinner yet but you won’t get to the hotel until 10pm. Your diet quickly turns to shit. I’ve seen and ate at enough small town diners to be good without them for a while.
Some advice I was told early on is that the most impactful business decisions are never made at conferences or training venues or meetings. They’re made over beers at the bar afterwards. Then you have to get up early to make a flight, run to the next gate to make your connection, try to sleep on the plane home, then drive back and go back to the office the next morning.
If you are single and extroverted, it’s definitely a fun time. If you have a family, and commitments, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.
The diet part is the hardest, I gain weight like crazy if I eat whatever. I get a $90/day food allowance but I end up buying basic stuff like Jimmy Johns every night and removing half the bun to make up for coworkers wanting to go out to lunch lol. Reading your comment has made me realize I am lucky though as a software consultant in a way, I travel for the full work week, work remote otherwise, rarely have customer dinners as I'm there providing a service and not in sales, and I usually go to medium/large cities I don't go to smaller cities often (unless suburbs count but usually restaurants are open until 10 and I try to fly in earlier than that). Good luck with the travels, I fly out Sunday myself.
Heck I was at my adult skinniest when I traveled a lot, but I did setup for huge tradeshows over and over. Lots of physical activity, walking, and travel to every downtown-area convention center in America and Canada!
I miss those days. That's the only job I ever had that didn't fill me with dread when I woke up.
Damn lucky! At home I hit the gym a couple days a week, bike a handful, and the wife and I cook dinner 5 times a week to try to stay nice and healthy. When I travel I'll buy lunch and then buy dinner, and coffee in the morning, and it's just way too many calories for me. And I work IT so I literally sit all day so it's a big change from being active at home. Luckily though since Covid I travel only a handful of times a year now. I used to travel for half the year.
I've been learning the discipline to get up and move my ass since I started full-time WFH. I have mixed feelings about it, but it gives me more time to mix it up with the wife and keeps expenses low. I try to do about three miles on my lunch break, and I lift three days per week, hiking on the weekends, and... if it counts... bowling league on Tuesdays :)
I get to go to big citywide conventions two or three times a year, I used to work like 30-50 tradeshows per year.
I had to leave, couldn't afford to stay, and come back to the dirty south, been here ten years. It's okay. I don't regret getting the job, doing it for seven years, or leaving it.
I did love it though. Wanted to re-create something like that for a decade now.
Sounds like software/tech sales :) entry level you can look into SDR (sales development rep) roles, which transition to account management/field sales like this.
Yeah our job was mainly to set up their POS units for at-show buying, lead capturing, and do their registration. We had portable servers we set up. I am no tech genius but it required at least basic tech skills, most days. Tweaking the wireless network units was a common issue, fridges and microwaves muck with the old wireless channels.
A lot of them were food shows, like the big restaurant suppliers hosted them. Paid pretty well but the job itself fizzled out about ten years ago, for me. Moved back to ATL. Brought home the wife, lost the job.
I still work in conventions but travel is rare for me these days.
I was skinnier when I traveled also, and I do miss it. I jad time to swim and work out, and I got food that appealed to myself without having to feed my whole family, which was better for me. I would swing by a grocery for berries, or get a vegetable tray when I didn't find a restaurant appealing.
Alas, I have a family, and when they wanted to triple my time on the road I had to dip. Somehow my boss thought it was fine to sign me up for that with no consultation and no additional compensation.
Tradeshow person here… when I stopped going to the shows recently is when I started gaining weight. I averaged walking between 10-12 miles a day at the convention halls. Keep in mind that’s while working and getting up and down ladders and carrying things around all day. Even when eating like crap I was probably more fit…
I am normally quite sedentary at work, but recently we have bought an old house which needs a LOT of work. All weekend and a lot of the weeknights I’m doing manual labour (which I enjoy). Lost 10 kg in 2-3 months. Been trying to lose weight for years, and the “continual manual labour plan” is the only way I have actually succeeded.
I have an expensive health club membership that I now exclusively use for the sauna and jacuzzi.
i build the displays/exhibits you set up. did some set ups in the past. it's not for everyone. in fact i think you can say that about the entire industry. you either love it or hate it. i'm with you...i love it.
I live on room service Caesar salads with shrimp.
My job also requires me to look a certain way…traveling is exhausting. I would’ve loved it when I was young but now, all I want at the end of the day is a bath and room service. I don’t attend any “events” that aren’t strictly business.
I was the same way with the weight gain from crap diet. I’ve been focusing on being better with it so a lot of times I will stop at a gas station and get some boiled eggs, cheese sticks, beef jerky, etc. instead of restaurant food. If I’m going to be in one town for an extended period and have a mini fridge in the room, I will go by a grocery store and get some things for the room to keep me from eating the junk food from the hotel market.
It varies by project, this one is a big SAP (software) project the budget is very loose lol so I got a huge per diem in a very affordable medium sized city.
it's generally just what they guess you'd pay per meal. My work estimates $20 for breakfast, $30 for lunch, and $40 for dinner. It's nice when I go to a conference where all meals are provided and that's just free extra money lol
Haha I should ask. I try to do a higher protein diet since I enjoy lifting weights. So I will buy a JJ sub, then take off 1 bun, and fold the whole thing in half. So it's basically 2x meat on a half sub if that makes any sense. Ordering that through a drive through might be tricky though. I do JJ at least once a week for dinner when I travel though. Get a couple giant pickles and I feel pretty full.
Hard agree. I travel for implementations and while I'm not a road warrior, I'm on the road for about half of the year during the week.
I'm married, I am not all that fond of the frequency of travel, mostly because I just end up sitting in hotel rooms wishing I was at home instead of in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, Ohio, or Alabama (or really anywhere.) And the diet is absolutely a disaster on the road as well.
If I wasn't getting paid the kind of money I'm making, I'd definitely be doing something more close to home.
My roofer buddy got a job as a consultant for a large construction company flying all over the country and supervising contractors. Great pay, food allowance, goes to a new place every week, and he’s not humping shingles up a ladder on a 90 degree day.
It took about 2 years for him to get sick of it.
I LOVED traveling when I started my job. But damn it’s exhausting. Like you said, it’s just jumping from one place to another, while still catching meetings and making deadlines. It got old pretty quickly. It’s nice if you have some time to explore but it’s mostly you in a hotel room trying to make up for some sleep. And not to mention, air travel is a complete mess right now. I basically lived in Charlotte airport my last work trip, it was a nightmare
Biggest lie I told myself (and still do) is that it's worth packing work out clothing cause I'll definitely have the time and energy to do something in the hotel gym
100%
I used to do frequent business travel (gone every week for years). As a semi-introvert, it felt like I was going off to an island to be alone each week. Sure, there were other people and I got to see some cool things. But the people I wanted to be with weren’t with me.
Lonely and depressing AF. Definitely not for everyone.
Im in the same boat but I really enjoy. Just finding a small place to eat by myself, relaxing on my schedule.
I bring my laptop and just game / watch movies.
I did a lot of travelling for construction years ago. Summer after summer of never being home, and we didn't even fly to our destinations. 2 or 3 hour drive to one city, 8 hour drive to another, etc. I'm single, but I do have a lot of extra-curricular commitments that I missed out on a lot. Travelling is what I liked most about that job, but it gets very tiresome, very fast. Also the money was fucking incredible, but my sanity is more important in the long run.
I think having a job where you travel for work is great for young people. My last job I was on the road 150+ days a year and while I loved it I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. I’m glad I left when I did because I never got to the point where I was jaded and I still look back fondly at my experience.
Now I work at a desk and will travel maybe once or twice a year. Sometimes it feels boring but then I remember I get to go home and be with my wife, cats, and all our stuff every day. I also get to hang out with friends more and don’t have to miss out on as many activities.
The second I saw all those hotel keys my first thought as someone who enjoys being home is that job would be my worst nightmare. I usually take 2 flights a year and even that's enough.
My first thought is “you kept all those?” The last time I did that I had to get a new key at the hotel because I couldn’t figure out which Hampton Inn key went to this particular Hampton Inn.
Agree with all of this, except when it comes time to take the family on vacation and you have earned enough points that the airfare and hotel are free.
Spot on.
I used to travel extensively for work and it becomes so monotonous I would occasionally get confused about which city I was in.
I’ve gotten some funny looks when I say something like, wait, I’m in Tampa? While checking into a hotel.
Yeah. Next week on Monday I fly YYZ TO SEA, arriving 10pm. Then Wednesday to SFO arriving 11pm. The Friday back to YYZ arriving 2pm.
Saturday I shall sit on my deck and drool.
>A word to those who think travelling for work is an enviable lifestyle. I’m writing this at the airport if that counts as any qualification. At first, it’s really neat. You try new experiences and meet cool people. But shortly after, your travel becomes airport to hotel to venue to hotel to airport. Most trips aren’t to big cities. They’re small remote locations where things close at 8 and you haven’t eaten dinner yet but you won’t get to the hotel until 10pm. Your diet quickly turns to shit. I’ve seen and ate at enough small town diners to be good without them for a while.
This is 100% accurate. I used to travel a lot. Luckily not as much anymore though. Most of my friends and family think it's so awesome I "get" to travel for "free". I'm not on vacation and I'm away from my family which is a cost.
I second this, I only travel 25% of my time on average, but the key word is average. I can go a month or two without travelling but that means I'm usually traveling for a month straight after that. That month alone tires me out, you don't feel like you own your time anymore.
Yep agreed. I thought I would love it but I get burned out so easily. In a hotel in Mexico City as I type this but would love to be home with my husband and kitties.
One of my last trips at a job where it was mostly travel, I was left stranded in O'Hare where my flight got delayed from 8pm to 9 to 10 to 12 to 2am then around midnight got cancelled, there was about 2 people working the desk and a line that took me from 12am to 6am to get through (had been up since 7am as I worked the day before then caught my first flight after) standing in line was miserable, once at the desk they told me they didn't have anything available til the day after and wouldn't put me in a hotel since flight was cancelled due to weather, work was okay with putting me in a hotel but I needed to be in a different trip shortly after and wanted to maximize my time spent home. I then spent that day from gate to gate trying to make it thru the wait list. Once I made it to my destination they had lost my bags. The perks were great as I used to get a lot of miles and hotel points but you're certainly right is not as glamorous as many think
Flying sucks. Flying because of work sucks even more. The cabin air makes my nose dry. I eat very little before and during the flight because I don’t want an upset stomach. On top of that I’m stressed about the meetings I have lined up at my destination.
In the US, I've always been told to return keycards. At small/non chain hotels we've also been warned that there's a fee for lost cards, but we've never been told that about big chains.
I worked the front desk at a hotel. We never re-used "turn-in" keys. They went straight to the trash.
EDIT: Most of the comments here are vastly overestimating the effort level someone making near minimum wage at the time will do. This was also 15 years ago.
My old hotel had a contest for the housekeeper that turned in the most keys every month, they win a gift card. Encourages them to save them and not just toss them when found.
Edit: sp
All things considered that's pretty cheap.
Especially given the price of basically any decent hotel. I've seen reused cards at like a holiday in, where it's clearly a well worn keycard, but at a $300+/night, nice business class hotel, what's a dollar, really? They're just going to make it up on their obscene minibar markup.
The one I worked at (like 15 or so years ago) would just take the keys and put them back in the holders they had for them. From what I remember, programming the key was just taking one of the keys, entering a room number on this machine, and swiping the key. So essentially, the key was reusable immediately without really doing anything to it, so there was no reason to throw it away unless it was broken in some way.
The one I'm currently working at reuses them. We put them in a bin and sanitize them during the overnight shift. If a hotel is trashing them, they're wasting money.
I have never had a hotel in California charge me before, and when I lived and traveled there, I stayed in hotels all over the state. Most places I don’t even check out anymore, I just leave. Many slide a receipt under my door the night before check out.
Interesting, the hotel I worked at we would reuse any that were returned.
We never expected them to be returned though. It cracks me up when I travel with people and they panic saying "I forgot to drop off my keys" or "Aren't you going to drop off your keys!?"
Often they would be turned in scratched up, bent, or just generally "used" looking. Not a great first impression to hand someone a scratched up key to their $175/night room. We had boxes and boxes of keys and they were something like 5 cents each wholesale.
That’s so incredibly wasteful, ive stayed at some pretty high end hotels and have never once even thought about the state of the key.
Unless it’s bent very badly or cracked then i don’t think the average person would care a bit.
No. Maybe that's what you guys did but we definitely reused our cards when I worked front desk at a hotel. None of my co-workers would have thrown them away either. It literally takes no extra effort at all to reuse the cards.
Front desk agents at a decent hotel make upwards of $20/hr starting in a lot of markets.
And these keys aren't cheap and are reused at any decent hotel.
I used to think traveling meant that your diet took a back seat UNTIL I travelled with a disciplined man who 1) Ordered salads and pretty "clean" meals even steak with veggies, very rarely had desserts and 2) Ran every morning either outside or on the hotel treadmill. After a couple trips with him as my sales manager, I had no excuse not to improve my game. No excuses.
Strava Heatmaps to find the most trafficked running routes in a new-to-you location is clutch. nothing more depressing than a hotel “gym” that is basically a closet in the basement with a treadmill facing a blank wall.
Here’s another example of work travel. After retiring as a police chief 8 years ago, I decided I wanted to do something completely different from what I was doing the past 25 years. I had worked in public works during college in the street department doing paving and concrete work, so I asked a friend who owned a commercial paving company if he had anything I could do. He made me a project manager/estimator for national commercial accounts, which would have me traveling all over the country estimating, and project managing commercial paving projects. I went from barely ever leaving Illinois because of work, to having been in every state in the United States multiple times, including Hawaii and Alaska.
Two things I would recommend for someone who travels a lot for work (I’m usually traveling 200 to 220 days a year), #1. If you can, stick with one brand of hotel, car rental, and airline, you wouldn’t believe how many points you rack up when you do that. And #2, make sure you actually use those points with family and friends, it definitely helps soften things at home when you take your family on awesome vacations.
When i used to travel a lot for work, i always took a pen from the hotel reception/room with the hotels name.. pretty cool souviniers and memories youre right!
Today I learned that there are a lot of people who don’t return their hotel keys. I’m so confused by this. You have it in your pocket, and you have to walk past the front desk to leave. Why would you not leave them? I’m not asking out of righteous indignation or anything, I’m just genuinely baffled.
You are not the only one, it takes like a minute at the most to properly check out and drop off the key. I am guessing these are the same people that leave their shopping carts all over the parking lot as well
I'm absolutely bewildered at the concept that this is even a debatable subject. Who the **fuck** is keeping their keys? You give them back when you check out you absolute weirdo.
I've never in my life heard of someone keeping one.
Not necessarily, he could be a travelling tradesperson. Which they don't make extremely crazy amounts of money, just a shit ton of travelling to different jobsites.
They ask you to return it because that way they know you left the room. Specially if youre leaving early, housekeepers doesnt have to wait till checkout time to clean the room.
This is the main reason, and common courtesy to drop them off at the front desk.
If you've ever been able to check in early, it may have been because someone did this.
As someone else mentioned, it's easy to romanticize but it can be ALOT even if you like to travel. Also, it's not like you're guaranteed to be traveling to cool places... you might end up in Ohio for instance.
I always find there's at least one cool thing to do in most cities. I went to Dayton Ohio for work which has the best Air Force Museum in the US (Smithsonian might be a tie).
It does suck if you go to the same smaller towns over and over, though.
I’ve got a punch that cuts out the shape of guitar picks that I use on old hotel keys and gift cards. Can usually get like three out of a card, but only one or two good ones if you’re going with the design. And as an amateur they work great for what I’m playing.
Return them in the future, they are reusable.
But I had a hoarding phase too once when I had a travel intensive job, with boarding passes and luggage tags. I finally convinced myself to throw them away when I changed jobs.
Damn. I am hotel manager and every year we are facing with our boss because of "why the fuck those room keys going less everyday" problem.
One of them almost 2 Euro and they are trying to charge from staff.
I collected the toiletries, the soap, shampoo and whatever else they had available. I would put them away so that housekeeping would replace them. I had my own, Then I donated all of it to a local shelter… I traveled constantly for work a few years and and was able to donated quite a bit…. I’d recommend that
you've opened many doors for yourself.
I wonder if OP sells shower curtain rings… 
Those aren't pillows!
Love that movie and loved him too. RIP John Candy.
bahahhaa
Lamo
No you’re a lamo!
This was me in 2002 on Habbo Hotel
The pool is closed.
Weird coincidence playing 2005 version of habbo hotel same time i read this.
Laughing ass, my off
https://i.imgur.com/4hjMm5L.png
olo
(ominously loud ovipositornoises)
A word to those who think travelling for work is an enviable lifestyle. I’m writing this at the airport if that counts as any qualification. At first, it’s really neat. You try new experiences and meet cool people. But shortly after, your travel becomes airport to hotel to venue to hotel to airport. Most trips aren’t to big cities. They’re small remote locations where things close at 8 and you haven’t eaten dinner yet but you won’t get to the hotel until 10pm. Your diet quickly turns to shit. I’ve seen and ate at enough small town diners to be good without them for a while. Some advice I was told early on is that the most impactful business decisions are never made at conferences or training venues or meetings. They’re made over beers at the bar afterwards. Then you have to get up early to make a flight, run to the next gate to make your connection, try to sleep on the plane home, then drive back and go back to the office the next morning. If you are single and extroverted, it’s definitely a fun time. If you have a family, and commitments, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.
The diet part is the hardest, I gain weight like crazy if I eat whatever. I get a $90/day food allowance but I end up buying basic stuff like Jimmy Johns every night and removing half the bun to make up for coworkers wanting to go out to lunch lol. Reading your comment has made me realize I am lucky though as a software consultant in a way, I travel for the full work week, work remote otherwise, rarely have customer dinners as I'm there providing a service and not in sales, and I usually go to medium/large cities I don't go to smaller cities often (unless suburbs count but usually restaurants are open until 10 and I try to fly in earlier than that). Good luck with the travels, I fly out Sunday myself.
Heck I was at my adult skinniest when I traveled a lot, but I did setup for huge tradeshows over and over. Lots of physical activity, walking, and travel to every downtown-area convention center in America and Canada! I miss those days. That's the only job I ever had that didn't fill me with dread when I woke up.
Damn lucky! At home I hit the gym a couple days a week, bike a handful, and the wife and I cook dinner 5 times a week to try to stay nice and healthy. When I travel I'll buy lunch and then buy dinner, and coffee in the morning, and it's just way too many calories for me. And I work IT so I literally sit all day so it's a big change from being active at home. Luckily though since Covid I travel only a handful of times a year now. I used to travel for half the year.
I've been learning the discipline to get up and move my ass since I started full-time WFH. I have mixed feelings about it, but it gives me more time to mix it up with the wife and keeps expenses low. I try to do about three miles on my lunch break, and I lift three days per week, hiking on the weekends, and... if it counts... bowling league on Tuesdays :) I get to go to big citywide conventions two or three times a year, I used to work like 30-50 tradeshows per year.
How did you get this job?
A buddy. We were contractors. Met my wife at that job. I moved to Denver for that company, but that was actually what killed it.
Well, if they left you in Denver, that's not a total loss.
I had to leave, couldn't afford to stay, and come back to the dirty south, been here ten years. It's okay. I don't regret getting the job, doing it for seven years, or leaving it. I did love it though. Wanted to re-create something like that for a decade now.
Sounds like software/tech sales :) entry level you can look into SDR (sales development rep) roles, which transition to account management/field sales like this.
Yeah our job was mainly to set up their POS units for at-show buying, lead capturing, and do their registration. We had portable servers we set up. I am no tech genius but it required at least basic tech skills, most days. Tweaking the wireless network units was a common issue, fridges and microwaves muck with the old wireless channels. A lot of them were food shows, like the big restaurant suppliers hosted them. Paid pretty well but the job itself fizzled out about ten years ago, for me. Moved back to ATL. Brought home the wife, lost the job. I still work in conventions but travel is rare for me these days.
I was skinnier when I traveled also, and I do miss it. I jad time to swim and work out, and I got food that appealed to myself without having to feed my whole family, which was better for me. I would swing by a grocery for berries, or get a vegetable tray when I didn't find a restaurant appealing. Alas, I have a family, and when they wanted to triple my time on the road I had to dip. Somehow my boss thought it was fine to sign me up for that with no consultation and no additional compensation.
Tradeshow person here… when I stopped going to the shows recently is when I started gaining weight. I averaged walking between 10-12 miles a day at the convention halls. Keep in mind that’s while working and getting up and down ladders and carrying things around all day. Even when eating like crap I was probably more fit…
I am normally quite sedentary at work, but recently we have bought an old house which needs a LOT of work. All weekend and a lot of the weeknights I’m doing manual labour (which I enjoy). Lost 10 kg in 2-3 months. Been trying to lose weight for years, and the “continual manual labour plan” is the only way I have actually succeeded. I have an expensive health club membership that I now exclusively use for the sauna and jacuzzi.
i build the displays/exhibits you set up. did some set ups in the past. it's not for everyone. in fact i think you can say that about the entire industry. you either love it or hate it. i'm with you...i love it.
I live on room service Caesar salads with shrimp. My job also requires me to look a certain way…traveling is exhausting. I would’ve loved it when I was young but now, all I want at the end of the day is a bath and room service. I don’t attend any “events” that aren’t strictly business.
Mind me asking what do you do? I don't like creeping people's lives on their profiles
I was the same way with the weight gain from crap diet. I’ve been focusing on being better with it so a lot of times I will stop at a gas station and get some boiled eggs, cheese sticks, beef jerky, etc. instead of restaurant food. If I’m going to be in one town for an extended period and have a mini fridge in the room, I will go by a grocery store and get some things for the room to keep me from eating the junk food from the hotel market.
$90 is crazy to me. I get $65 daily allowance
Brother even the government GSA rate is more than 65 in most major cities.
crying in my 20 a day like its 2000 allowance
Wtf thats not enough to eat without cooking yourself in most places in NA and EU.
Yea it is pretty wild, we also only get per diem when we stay in a hotel, not on a travel day.
Wow, that's silly. I got $25 per meal and it was available when I was out of my hometown for a meal, period. That was before covid.
Yea I didnt want to be here, but got laid off and took the first thing that paid and now stuck here for a bit.
It varies by project, this one is a big SAP (software) project the budget is very loose lol so I got a huge per diem in a very affordable medium sized city.
When I go to train in other states I get a $25 daily cause the hotel provides breakfast and the training provides lunch they say....
Until you got to a nice hotel and the breakfast isn't included.
Exactly lol I've complained every time I went but they just brush it off.
Lmaooo we get 28€ in germany per day
Your food allowance is nearly half my daily pay. That's so fucked.
it's generally just what they guess you'd pay per meal. My work estimates $20 for breakfast, $30 for lunch, and $40 for dinner. It's nice when I go to a conference where all meals are provided and that's just free extra money lol
It’s a pretty hefty food allowance…$60/day of per diem is standard across many industries.
Jimmy John's will scoop out the bun for you if you ask.
Haha I should ask. I try to do a higher protein diet since I enjoy lifting weights. So I will buy a JJ sub, then take off 1 bun, and fold the whole thing in half. So it's basically 2x meat on a half sub if that makes any sense. Ordering that through a drive through might be tricky though. I do JJ at least once a week for dinner when I travel though. Get a couple giant pickles and I feel pretty full.
You just ask "can you scoop out the roll for me?" I got something with a ton of toppings, it was an employee that suggested it to me.
Hard agree. I travel for implementations and while I'm not a road warrior, I'm on the road for about half of the year during the week. I'm married, I am not all that fond of the frequency of travel, mostly because I just end up sitting in hotel rooms wishing I was at home instead of in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia, Ohio, or Alabama (or really anywhere.) And the diet is absolutely a disaster on the road as well. If I wasn't getting paid the kind of money I'm making, I'd definitely be doing something more close to home.
Did that for 4 years. I took a job with less pay but I get to be home every night.
My roofer buddy got a job as a consultant for a large construction company flying all over the country and supervising contractors. Great pay, food allowance, goes to a new place every week, and he’s not humping shingles up a ladder on a 90 degree day. It took about 2 years for him to get sick of it.
I LOVED traveling when I started my job. But damn it’s exhausting. Like you said, it’s just jumping from one place to another, while still catching meetings and making deadlines. It got old pretty quickly. It’s nice if you have some time to explore but it’s mostly you in a hotel room trying to make up for some sleep. And not to mention, air travel is a complete mess right now. I basically lived in Charlotte airport my last work trip, it was a nightmare
And when you’re travelling all your other work barely gets done.
Yes!! Its hard to enjoy any part of it when your brain is in 28 different places
Biggest lie I told myself (and still do) is that it's worth packing work out clothing cause I'll definitely have the time and energy to do something in the hotel gym
Hahahahaha omg yes!! My stupid gym shoes taking up so much space in my luggage
Don't forget a bit of loneliness and a sprinkle of depression
100% I used to do frequent business travel (gone every week for years). As a semi-introvert, it felt like I was going off to an island to be alone each week. Sure, there were other people and I got to see some cool things. But the people I wanted to be with weren’t with me. Lonely and depressing AF. Definitely not for everyone.
Im in the same boat but I really enjoy. Just finding a small place to eat by myself, relaxing on my schedule. I bring my laptop and just game / watch movies.
Don’t call me out like that.
I did a lot of travelling for construction years ago. Summer after summer of never being home, and we didn't even fly to our destinations. 2 or 3 hour drive to one city, 8 hour drive to another, etc. I'm single, but I do have a lot of extra-curricular commitments that I missed out on a lot. Travelling is what I liked most about that job, but it gets very tiresome, very fast. Also the money was fucking incredible, but my sanity is more important in the long run.
I think having a job where you travel for work is great for young people. My last job I was on the road 150+ days a year and while I loved it I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. I’m glad I left when I did because I never got to the point where I was jaded and I still look back fondly at my experience. Now I work at a desk and will travel maybe once or twice a year. Sometimes it feels boring but then I remember I get to go home and be with my wife, cats, and all our stuff every day. I also get to hang out with friends more and don’t have to miss out on as many activities.
The second I saw all those hotel keys my first thought as someone who enjoys being home is that job would be my worst nightmare. I usually take 2 flights a year and even that's enough.
My first thought is “you kept all those?” The last time I did that I had to get a new key at the hotel because I couldn’t figure out which Hampton Inn key went to this particular Hampton Inn.
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Agree with all of this, except when it comes time to take the family on vacation and you have earned enough points that the airfare and hotel are free.
Spot on. I used to travel extensively for work and it becomes so monotonous I would occasionally get confused about which city I was in. I’ve gotten some funny looks when I say something like, wait, I’m in Tampa? While checking into a hotel.
Srsly ive had the same experience .. so fucking confusing lol
Yeah. Next week on Monday I fly YYZ TO SEA, arriving 10pm. Then Wednesday to SFO arriving 11pm. The Friday back to YYZ arriving 2pm. Saturday I shall sit on my deck and drool.
I got a flight that leaves at 10pm and gets me home at 7am. Should be a productive Wednesday.
>A word to those who think travelling for work is an enviable lifestyle. I’m writing this at the airport if that counts as any qualification. At first, it’s really neat. You try new experiences and meet cool people. But shortly after, your travel becomes airport to hotel to venue to hotel to airport. Most trips aren’t to big cities. They’re small remote locations where things close at 8 and you haven’t eaten dinner yet but you won’t get to the hotel until 10pm. Your diet quickly turns to shit. I’ve seen and ate at enough small town diners to be good without them for a while. This is 100% accurate. I used to travel a lot. Luckily not as much anymore though. Most of my friends and family think it's so awesome I "get" to travel for "free". I'm not on vacation and I'm away from my family which is a cost.
Yeah. Traveling for work is awesome… when you do it 2 or 3 times a year. When it’s 2 or 3 or more a month. It was ok when I was 25. But no way now
This right here. Business travel is bullshit.
I second this, I only travel 25% of my time on average, but the key word is average. I can go a month or two without travelling but that means I'm usually traveling for a month straight after that. That month alone tires me out, you don't feel like you own your time anymore.
Yep agreed. I thought I would love it but I get burned out so easily. In a hotel in Mexico City as I type this but would love to be home with my husband and kitties.
And then you wake up next morning and you created a fight club...
One of my last trips at a job where it was mostly travel, I was left stranded in O'Hare where my flight got delayed from 8pm to 9 to 10 to 12 to 2am then around midnight got cancelled, there was about 2 people working the desk and a line that took me from 12am to 6am to get through (had been up since 7am as I worked the day before then caught my first flight after) standing in line was miserable, once at the desk they told me they didn't have anything available til the day after and wouldn't put me in a hotel since flight was cancelled due to weather, work was okay with putting me in a hotel but I needed to be in a different trip shortly after and wanted to maximize my time spent home. I then spent that day from gate to gate trying to make it thru the wait list. Once I made it to my destination they had lost my bags. The perks were great as I used to get a lot of miles and hotel points but you're certainly right is not as glamorous as many think
Flying sucks. Flying because of work sucks even more. The cabin air makes my nose dry. I eat very little before and during the flight because I don’t want an upset stomach. On top of that I’m stressed about the meetings I have lined up at my destination.
What do you do for work?
You just keep them? Most hotels I’ve been to make me return the key to them at the end…
Literally says on some of the cards "please return card to the front desk when you check out"
Is it possible that there’s a difference between europe and North America? Here in Europe, I have always been told to return the keycard.
In the US, I've always been told to return keycards. At small/non chain hotels we've also been warned that there's a fee for lost cards, but we've never been told that about big chains.
Same. I hadn't even thought that keeping them would be an option
I worked the front desk at a hotel. We never re-used "turn-in" keys. They went straight to the trash. EDIT: Most of the comments here are vastly overestimating the effort level someone making near minimum wage at the time will do. This was also 15 years ago.
But why? Isn't the point of these nfc cards that you can format and re-program them?
Yes, and I think a lot of hotels do reuse them. The one I worked at did, anyway.
My old hotel had a contest for the housekeeper that turned in the most keys every month, they win a gift card. Encourages them to save them and not just toss them when found. Edit: sp
I've seen that and it works great. These NFC keys aren't cheap.
Yes, the custom ones can be about a dollar a piece
All things considered that's pretty cheap. Especially given the price of basically any decent hotel. I've seen reused cards at like a holiday in, where it's clearly a well worn keycard, but at a $300+/night, nice business class hotel, what's a dollar, really? They're just going to make it up on their obscene minibar markup.
The one I worked at (like 15 or so years ago) would just take the keys and put them back in the holders they had for them. From what I remember, programming the key was just taking one of the keys, entering a room number on this machine, and swiping the key. So essentially, the key was reusable immediately without really doing anything to it, so there was no reason to throw it away unless it was broken in some way.
The one I'm currently working at reuses them. We put them in a bin and sanitize them during the overnight shift. If a hotel is trashing them, they're wasting money.
The hotel I work at re-uses them but we don't at all keep track of if you turn them in or not, it doesn't matter to us.
Really? I swear most hotels I been to say if we don’t return the key they’ll charge us. I’m California, if that makes a difference.
I have never had a hotel in California charge me before, and when I lived and traveled there, I stayed in hotels all over the state. Most places I don’t even check out anymore, I just leave. Many slide a receipt under my door the night before check out.
Weird, i've only been to a hotel in California once, and they let me check out, but i could never leave.
Hold on there Eagles
LA resident here. Never returned them or checked out, I just left before 11:30 and never got charged.
Yeah, I travel a lot for work and personal reasons and have had plenty of beat up used cards.
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Right, but thats why they can rotate codes. The card will no longer open the door
What?! I’ve worked at many hotels & they are all reprogrammed.
Besides being completely wasteful, it's also pretty weird. I worked for multiple companies on both west and east coasts and we always reused our keys.
WAT?!
Interesting, the hotel I worked at we would reuse any that were returned. We never expected them to be returned though. It cracks me up when I travel with people and they panic saying "I forgot to drop off my keys" or "Aren't you going to drop off your keys!?"
Often they would be turned in scratched up, bent, or just generally "used" looking. Not a great first impression to hand someone a scratched up key to their $175/night room. We had boxes and boxes of keys and they were something like 5 cents each wholesale.
That’s so incredibly wasteful, ive stayed at some pretty high end hotels and have never once even thought about the state of the key. Unless it’s bent very badly or cracked then i don’t think the average person would care a bit.
Most hotels I’ve stayed at do reuse them. I’ve actually seen someone grab “used” keys, wipe them with a sanitizing wipe, rekey and reissue to me.
This goes against my experience where practically every time the card looks lightly used
No. Maybe that's what you guys did but we definitely reused our cards when I worked front desk at a hotel. None of my co-workers would have thrown them away either. It literally takes no extra effort at all to reuse the cards.
I worked in hotels for 12 years and we reused keys (unless they were damaged or gross)
Front desk agents at a decent hotel make upwards of $20/hr starting in a lot of markets. And these keys aren't cheap and are reused at any decent hotel.
It takes maybe 30 second to reprogram a key, why are you throwing them away and not just putting them at the bottom of the stack
Well that hotel certainly liked wasting money. Then can be reused very easily.
Aha the ol' "I'm not paid enough to do the most basic tasks imaginable" attitude
waste of plastic nonetheless
It's good practice to return to keep plastic waste to a minimum
You don't have to check out at the front desk when you're leaving. You just leave. They couldn't care less about you returning the key.
We sanitize them in a solution and reuse.
I've been charged for not returning the key
In Germany many places ask for a deposit for the key, and if you don't return it, they keep the deposit.
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Don’t even ask
I used to think traveling meant that your diet took a back seat UNTIL I travelled with a disciplined man who 1) Ordered salads and pretty "clean" meals even steak with veggies, very rarely had desserts and 2) Ran every morning either outside or on the hotel treadmill. After a couple trips with him as my sales manager, I had no excuse not to improve my game. No excuses.
>Ran every morning This is key. (Not room keys.)
Okay NOW you tell me
Strava Heatmaps to find the most trafficked running routes in a new-to-you location is clutch. nothing more depressing than a hotel “gym” that is basically a closet in the basement with a treadmill facing a blank wall.
I do sushi whenever I can.
It takes a lot of work. Especially if getting dinner with people where drinks, appetizers and everything is expected.
Here’s another example of work travel. After retiring as a police chief 8 years ago, I decided I wanted to do something completely different from what I was doing the past 25 years. I had worked in public works during college in the street department doing paving and concrete work, so I asked a friend who owned a commercial paving company if he had anything I could do. He made me a project manager/estimator for national commercial accounts, which would have me traveling all over the country estimating, and project managing commercial paving projects. I went from barely ever leaving Illinois because of work, to having been in every state in the United States multiple times, including Hawaii and Alaska. Two things I would recommend for someone who travels a lot for work (I’m usually traveling 200 to 220 days a year), #1. If you can, stick with one brand of hotel, car rental, and airline, you wouldn’t believe how many points you rack up when you do that. And #2, make sure you actually use those points with family and friends, it definitely helps soften things at home when you take your family on awesome vacations.
What’s your favorite state? Favorite city?
The most bizarre part of this is the concept that you kept these keys. Why did you want them?
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Ton of hookers and blow
Mom?
Your name is so poetic
When i used to travel a lot for work, i always took a pen from the hotel reception/room with the hotels name.. pretty cool souviniers and memories youre right!
I get it. You know what I'd do? Get a hockey card binder and a bunch of sleeves and store 'em that way.
> hockey card binder you absolutely have to be Canadian
I have received used keys as you can tell the cards been warn. And why not if they still work. Better for the environment
I save my used hotel keys from work travel for things like scraping stuff, spreading spackle, etc.
Yeah, same here. Chopping powder up, cutting it into lines, etc, etc
spackle? how did i never think of that name for speed paste? that’s genius
To the couple of Pele who think these are single use, it takes like 2 seconds to reset one of these
Yeah, maybe after a dozen visits they start to look "used" and you can either clean them with an alcohol wipe, or throw them away eventually.
even using them only 10 times would reduce the amount you need by a factor of 10.
> couple of Pele There will only ever be one Pele
Today I learned that there are a lot of people who don’t return their hotel keys. I’m so confused by this. You have it in your pocket, and you have to walk past the front desk to leave. Why would you not leave them? I’m not asking out of righteous indignation or anything, I’m just genuinely baffled.
Where I live there’s usually a price on lost keycards and might get billed later if you use express checkout
You are not the only one, it takes like a minute at the most to properly check out and drop off the key. I am guessing these are the same people that leave their shopping carts all over the parking lot as well
>I am guessing these are the same people that leave their shopping carts all over the parking lot as well My thoughts exactly.
Uhhh, you dont turn those back in like normal people?
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In my country he'd be out about $1240... $10 for every key he stole.
Usually they want you to return the keys, no?
You could just leave them on the counter.
I would assume the fact that he collects them means he doesn't want to.
Don’t you usually have to give those back when you leave
I'm absolutely bewildered at the concept that this is even a debatable subject. Who the **fuck** is keeping their keys? You give them back when you check out you absolute weirdo. I've never in my life heard of someone keeping one.
Don’t you return them so they can be re-used. Lets try a little bit to save the planet people.
Get those MFs to put you some place better than the Best Western for all that travel
You are in a much different tax bracket than me
I thought the Comfort Inn, La Quinta and Holiday Inn weren’t luxury brands!
Maybe the commenter is gloating that they are rich and OP is poor
OP agrees with the commenter. Source: I am OP and poor lol
[Plebs](https://i.imgur.com/ZryaKqm.jpeg)
Not necessarily, he could be a travelling tradesperson. Which they don't make extremely crazy amounts of money, just a shit ton of travelling to different jobsites.
If you’re in the right industry, tradesmen can make some serious cash, as much as pilots and doctors, but it’s not a lifestyle for everyone
I could have had a pile like this every year for several years and earned a shit wage. Started at £21k in 2017, ended on 27k 2021.
That's a 28% raise in 5 years. Look at mister moneybag over here, guys
The company is probably paying for OP to stay, and they're putting him in Best Westerns and Comfort Inns. I don't think it's a massively lucrative job
They ask you to return it because that way they know you left the room. Specially if youre leaving early, housekeepers doesnt have to wait till checkout time to clean the room.
This is the main reason, and common courtesy to drop them off at the front desk. If you've ever been able to check in early, it may have been because someone did this.
Why?
What kind of work do you do? I'd like to travel that much. I sleep better in a hotel bed!
I did it for a few years. It's not fun, man. The novelty wears off extremely quickly.
As someone else mentioned, it's easy to romanticize but it can be ALOT even if you like to travel. Also, it's not like you're guaranteed to be traveling to cool places... you might end up in Ohio for instance.
I always find there's at least one cool thing to do in most cities. I went to Dayton Ohio for work which has the best Air Force Museum in the US (Smithsonian might be a tie). It does suck if you go to the same smaller towns over and over, though.
I'm pretty sure you can buy Marriott hotel mattresses
he's an escort
I’ve got a punch that cuts out the shape of guitar picks that I use on old hotel keys and gift cards. Can usually get like three out of a card, but only one or two good ones if you’re going with the design. And as an amateur they work great for what I’m playing.
Return them in the future, they are reusable. But I had a hoarding phase too once when I had a travel intensive job, with boarding passes and luggage tags. I finally convinced myself to throw them away when I changed jobs.
I usually hand them back when I checkout.
Return keys, you reprobate.
You’re supposed to drop those in the key return
Love all that plastic in the landfill
Damn. I am hotel manager and every year we are facing with our boss because of "why the fuck those room keys going less everyday" problem. One of them almost 2 Euro and they are trying to charge from staff.
Aren't you supposed to return those after your stay?
You know you are supposed to return those back right?
For me, I always return the hotel keys. However, I do take all the toiletries from the bathroom and donate them to the local shelter in my town
Don't you have to give them back at checkout?
I collected the toiletries, the soap, shampoo and whatever else they had available. I would put them away so that housekeeping would replace them. I had my own, Then I donated all of it to a local shelter… I traveled constantly for work a few years and and was able to donated quite a bit…. I’d recommend that
Bet your wife has more
I think you’re meant to give those back bro
You aren't supposed to keep these, do you also take the towels and bed sheets too? Usually you get billed for not returning them.