Oh Man! I used to manage a market research operation. I usually had 8-10
field analysts on staff. They had to spend about 1/3 of their time on
the road, in mostly unglamourous places around the US and Canada. One of
the toughest things about interviewing candidates was to judge whether
they would stand up to the travel. Mostly youngish people, they were
invariably all excited about the travel, often that was why they applied
for the job. Then the reality of extensive car travel within 2, 3, 4
different cities over 7-10 days would set in after a while. And they
might get paged in the airport on the way home to stay out a couple more
days. Or they would be tring to get around rural Maryland in January in
the last rental car available at Baltimore, the one without snow tires.
That was the major reason we had a fairly high turnover rate in that
job. Some few thrived on it for years, but it became a negative pretty
soon for most.
Great stories, though. One guy was chased down the Interstate from Ft.
Worth toward Dallas by a tornado. Actually, several of them got to
witness cars, double wide trailers, etc. thrown through the air. One of
my favorites was the woman who couldn't seem to figure out how to turn
up the heat in her little cabin in the Buffalo Bill Motel in Cody, WY -
winter of course. When she went to the desk and asked, she was
wordlessly handed a couple of extra blankets. Then there was the guy,
who was a bit afraid of flying anyway, who ended up as the only
passenger on the little plane filght through the Rockies. Since there
was no co-pilot, the pilot had him take that seat, then proceeded to
scare the ... out of him by flying between and around the mountains
because of the low clouds. Oh yeah, there was the time I thought I was
going to be landed in a tomato field in Mexico. The overcast was so low
I could read the labels on the boxes the pickers were filling before the
pilot got his signals straight with the airport traffic controller for
an instrument landing. They were both trained, but hadn't done it in a
coon's age. I was glad they talked it through before doing it.
Interesting times. On that project, they would send a plane just to pick
me up at the major airport and fly me to the small one. Kinda cool when
they turn off the runway lights and go home after you have landed.
Moose
ftog@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>Oh what a hard life you lead Thomas. I could do with travelling
>further than the 50 miles to London once a week :-)
>
>Chris
>
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