I have been working in Corporate IT for 21 years now, and
for more than ten years, I have been a consultant, working on a contract basis
for various firms in various industries.
Because the work is temporary, clients aren’t that amenable to
consultants wanting “time off”, as we are there for a specific timeframe for a
specific project and when the project ends, we move on. We are paid by the hour, without benefits,
and without any promise of permanent work.
My choice of work certainly hampers my love of travel and my frequent
need for decompression.
I simply can’t take a so-called “normal vacation”. It isn’t possible. I don’t know if the project funding will end
unexpectedly and when the next work will come.
I can’t plan ahead as I either have to cancel due to a contract starting
or a contract ending. It is very
difficult to take long trips, since requesting time off either results in an
early termination by the client, and I don’t know when the next interview or
offer might come. Having to take calls
from countless head hunters, and conduct interviews while I am in a different
time zone, in a non-cell phone area, or on a beach somewhere is in direct
opposition to my no cell phone, no email policy while I am decompressing. Being on call while I am trying to
decompress defeats the purpose of these necessary breaks and makes them
unenjoyable, unrelaxing and requiring an additional vacation from that supposed
vacation. Clients have very short
timeframes in which they are hiring, and if you aren’t available when they want
you, they will find someone who is. It’s
that simple. So we the consultant are
screwed on both ends. We have to be immediately available at all times and are
not allowed to have personal lives, families or the need for vacations.
Ironically, I take more trips now than I ever did before. I do this by taking many small trips over the
course of each year, mostly long weekends, and the trip could consist of traveling anywhere
from five minutes (I happen to live across the street from a glorious spa) to
two hours to a local spa resort where a spa day is equivalent to a week’s
vacation away.
Occasionally I actually get on an airplane. The physical act of traveling is a
patience-testing, frustrating, exasperating and stressful prelude to the
promise of paradise that awaits me somewhere.
One must endure a very trying ritual of going to an airport and dealing
with the airline industry, if one hopes to actually go somewhere else to
actually relax from what is stressing them in their current location. For some reason, I am a magnet for
problematic airlines, flights, airports, or environmental conditions. I
rarely have a flight where one leg of the journey doesn’t have some problem. And sometimes if I am lucky, both legs. I try to avoid problems by flying direct, or
upgrading to first class or bulkhead row with legroom, but even mathematical
odds and the rules of probability don’t seem to apply where I am concerned. If there is a problem, it will find me.
I always get the slowest TSA screening line. The line moves seemingly fast until the
person in front of me gets in it. Even
after 15 years, people are still trying to bring bottles of liquids, much more
than the allowed baggage, and questionable items. I myself always seem to set some alarm off,
and then am delayed waiting for the female frisker (male TSA employees aren’t
allowed to frisk female passengers).
There seems to be a shortage of female friskers the days I fly and the
moment I go through security. I will be
enrolling in the TSA pre-screen program when I can get a day off for the
interview, so I can bypass the madding crowd.
I am always on an airplane that exceeds weight maximum. On a puddle jumper flight, you actually have
to tell the steward your weight (lieing won’t behoove you if you want to arrive
alive and safe), and they seat you accordingly so that the plane is properly
balanced left to right and front to back.
There are very few passengers on these sorts of flights, and no head
room or leg room or any carry on allowed. But when I am on an air bus, forced to sit on
a tarmack for two hours while they figure out how to reduce the weight on the
plane, ie, taking luggage off that just took one hour for one employee to load
one by one, removing mail, asking people to give up their seats and get off, my
patience wears thin. Then you go the
route of paying substantial money to “upgrade” to the bulkhead row, so that you
can be the first off the plane because you have no bags, require no time to
exit and just want to get the hell off the plane and get started on your
well-earned relaxation, and after two hour delays, you are asked to stay in
your seat so that connecting passengers can make their plane that has already
left, and the airline won’t offer you a refund for being flexible due to their mistake.
Then there are the countless times I am sitting at the gate
waiting for a plane that is delayed somewhere else. It is clear skies and all systems go in sunny
California, but it is snowing in St. Louis or Chicago and apparently that is
where the only available plane in the airline fleet is that can take me from
San Francisco or Oakland to southern California or Arizona or Nevada. You wait hours upon hours for a plane that
may or may not show up during your lifetime, the airline staff keeping the status
very close to the vest, not telling you if it will be quicker to fly another
airline or flight or wait for your reserved plane. Just a few weeks ago, I was stuck in Vegas
waiting for a plane that was having mechanical difficulties at an Orange County
airport that had no maintenance crew.
The maintenance crew had to be flown in from somewhere else to that
airport to fix the plane and then the broken plane would be flown to
Vegas. The countdown to fly from OC to
Vegas wouldn’t begin until the crew flew from wherever the hell they were to OC
and then however long it would take to fix the plane and then fly it to Vegas.
Was I eagerly anticipating a plane that had
known mechanical failures only hours before? Was I supposed to be grateful that
a faulty plane was being provided to take me home? I could have driven home faster, but because I
had upgraded first to the front row and then to first class, I would have lost all
of this money, and forced to sit in the back row and in the middle seat on one
of the five flights that were scheduled after mine but would still leave before
mine. With no refund for their error. The
staff could have told us three hours sooner that the continually delayed
departure times were still not going to be met.
If it takes two hours to fly from A to B, they would know at least two
hours in advance when the plane was still sitting on the ground at A. A plane can’t defy the law of physics. Do airlines really have no backup planes in
their fleets? I was at McCarran Airport at 10am and didn’t
arrive in Oakland until 8pm. A less than
two hour flight cost me an entire day of vacation. I could have stayed at the Aria pool, flew
home the next day in the same time. I
made a lot of acquaintances at the gate that day.
Then there are the times you are waiting for a plane delayed
by weather and the plane is delayed and delayed and delayed. You are at the airport two hours early,
per TSA suggestion, then at the gate another four hours. Then they announce after all this waiting
when the plane finally arrives that the crew has exceeded their allowed shift
and cannot fly us now. Why they wait
four hours to tell us this after other flights could have been taken I will
never understand. And there is no
provision of a bed or a room. I can’t
tell you how many airport floors I have slept on. You are expected to accept this fate. There
are near riots at the gate and the poor airline staff with no authority or
control gets to deliver the news. I do
feel for them and try to be as polite as I can.
But sometimes the act of traveling is more stressful and takes the
relaxation out of vacation. And sometimes you just feel like someone is
screwing you from the front and behind simultaneously (and in this case it
isn’t pleasant).
I have been delayed by ice on the wings requiring multiple
de-icings, ice on the runway, fog, rain, lightning, weight limits, number of
planes in line for takeoff, unavailable gates, additional gas needed due to
weight exceed after we had already pushed out of the gate.
The ultimate insult was on another flight I took to Vegas in
2013 on an airline whose name will not be mentioned here. It was one of those airlines that are dirt
cheap. Never again!!! They charge you $80 for the flight but that doesn’t
include an actual seat, the seat is an extra $15 one way (I can’t remember the
actual fee). Are you expected to
stand? How does a plane ticket not
include a chair? Then the ultimate screw
was the $100 charge for the tiny bag that I placed under my seat. I had no checked bag or no overhead bag. And
I had to pay this fee twice also, screwed from front and behind. That dirt cheap flight cost me more than a
known and respected airline would have.
Don’t fall for this deception. Cheap
carries a price. For $300 I could have
flown United or Delta twice.
Then there are the trips that your bags take without you. We are crammed in like sardines, nickeled and
dimed for everything from getting to sit, to a bag, to a seat in the front row,
we are stepped on, drooled on, tripped over, kicked, manhandled, groped,
x-rayed, and disturbed by the lack of courtesy of others. The next insult will be the charge for water,
seats in the aisles, using the restroom, or breathable air.
We are helpless victims, tortured and disrespected. We have to endure all of this, and there is
nothing we can do about it. If this is the
Friendly Skies, what would unfriendly look like? I shutter to think. I have to get myself
mentally prepared every time I’m about to actually have to fly somewhere. I already know I am taking three trips in
2016 requiring an airplane, and one more in 2015. There has to be a better way to relax. Right
now, I am a bit sore from the amount of screwing I have endured.
