For the last several months my entire life has been consumed by work - leaving my family behind for the greater part of each week to live in a hotel far from home. The reality has turned out to be very different than the expectation.
When watching George Clooney breeze through airports and hotels in “Up in the Air”, you might be fooled into thinking that an entirely “professional” lifestyle is something to aspire to.
You would be wrong.
I used to think it would be great fun to travel with work - to stay in hotels, to get to know the staff at the check-in desk, and kick back in the bar on an evening. Having “been there”, and “done that” now, I know the reality is very different than the dream.
While at a client site you will invariably find yourself “going the extra mile” in the work you have committed to; meaning your hotel evening plans get torn to pieces and walked all over every single night. The staff in the hotel are not your friend, and never will be. You are no more than another face - a minor annoyance they wish was not in their face. You are probably being paid an order of magnitude more than them, and they know it. Just as you sit at work hoping nobody will hassle you, so do they - only you are their hassle. Spending all day with co-workers and then eating together in the evening is a receipe for disaster. As mild mannered as anybody might be, the smallest annoyances in each other’s behaviour tug away like a loose thread, eventually unravelling you completely. Sitting alone in the hotel bar or restaurant is extremely lonely. Nobody is interested in making friends for the evening - they are all in the same boat as you; pre-occupied with either the work they have left to do, or things they need to prepare for the next morning.
I guess the reality of George Clooney’s situation wouldn’t have made for much of a movie - unless you could have heard his thoughts as he stood frustrated behind a colleague as they fished in their bag for the security pass they should have been looking for as they walked to the door… or as a VPN connection died late at night at the moment he was about to pull a slightly charred project from the fire… or as his finger refuses to operate the biometric door locks throughout the building… or as his co-workers cause him to be 15 minutes late for yet another meeting…