The plane from Prague is late, late enough that I\’ll miss my connection in Lisbon meaning an overnight stay there…..Grrr.
A reasonable solution would be to rent a car in Lisbon and drive but a 2 1/2 hour drive at midnight isn\’t the most exciting of prospects.
Or there\’s a train in the morning….
Darn this international capitalism shit!
BTW, yes, there is a reason why people who do this sort of work get quite well paid. Can you spot what it is?
BTW, yes, there is a reason why people who do this sort of work get quite well paid. Can you spot what it is?
Mate of mine is a banker, paid a damned fortune he is, and no doubt one of those who the left despise and consider responsible for all the country’s ills. He spends his life on a plane or in hotels, as does his wife, so they hardly spend more than a few days together before one or the other is off again. Fortunately, he loves it* (not sure about his wife), so for him the money is a bonus. But I wonder if those who denigrate bankers would be prepared to put up with such a lifestyle?
*As do I, in my line of work. A lifetime of travelling the world at somebody else’s expense was not to be missed.
You can have my share. Though I must admit there are a couple of nice restaurants on foreign shores that I sometimes hanker after.
It would be nice but it rarely works out that way. We’re in Budapest at the moment. We’d been here for work and only managed to see anything other than meeting rooms because a meeting was cancelled. So we’ve taken some time off over half-term.
In one job, I managed to find myself whisked to exotic locations all around the world and straight down the nearest nuclear bunker!
Some years ago, being the young lad, my employers decided I was short of international experience. They detailed one of the old lags to take me on a sightseeing tour that took in a number of our clients. Having been issued with open first-class tickets and relevant corporate credit cards we flew Heathrow, Rio, Miami, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Puerto Vallarta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Heathrow. It took us 4-5 weeks and I’m sure we met a couple of clients along the way but the details are hazy. However, I do recall some spectacular meals, not least the best Lobster Thermidor I ever ate.
Presumably because this kind of work, whatever it is, generates a greater subjective value in the minds of your customers, like any other free market income.
I hope this isn’t some kind of “because it’s far more immiserating jetting all over the globe than cleaning toilets”.
I’ve done both and cleaning latrines is definitely worse.
I once spent 5+ hours in Zurich airport because Swissair didn’t bother to have a better connection between its associate’s flight from Brastislava and its flights to Heathrow (not that Heathrow is particularly convenient for me).
It is *not* that we have to be well paid to put up with this: it is that those those whose jobs do not add sufficient value in moral or financial terms just don’t do it. When was working for the “Know-How” fund and equivalents in “Emerging Markets” I found that the majority of my colleagues were Christians or practising Jews for whom the money was secondary to doing something valuable.
I’ve done a lot of travelling around a lot in my younger working days. Nice for a while, but no way would I do it for a long time.
There’s travel and travel. When you end up buying Christmas dinner from a service station vending machine somewhere outside Kidderminster whilst the rain dribbles down your neck, that’s not good. Then there are the times you’re on a beach in the Caribbean for three weeks fully paid to do nothing whilst the client makes up their mind whether or not to cancel a week’s work.
Best travel for work I’ve ever had was back when I was very young and did a ski season as a floater, being sent wherever I was needed each week. That meant sitting in a car being driven through the Alps on the one day a week there was actually work to be done. Since no-one ever did much work the rest of the week, they effectively paid me and ferried me around for a season’s skiing in every major resort in the Alps. Oh, and provided lift passes. For some reason that job paid (a couple of beers a week) more than regular chalet work, so evidently it’s not just bankers who get the big bucks 😉
@ Bernie #2 and SE #3
There was one really good restaurant in Bratislava to which I was introduced by a colleague so on future visits I lunched off bread and cheese so that I could afford a visit thereto on my last evening.
Yup, but please don’t forget the poor Airframe Driver up front.