Business Travel article

I write a humour column for the Thompson Okanagan Business Examiner magazine, and here is my column for this month.

As a side comment, I find it difficult to write a humour column for business, instead of what I used to do, which was write a business column with occasional humour. Just sayin...

I re-worked my Top 10 Things that make a Great Hotel bit (now deleted from the blog), and added some more meat to those bones...so here it is.

Business travel may be down what with the recession and all, but there are still some tried and true rules and information that will make you a better business traveler.

First – bring your own pillow. This is handy for when you are flying and you can pull out your own pillow instead of those idiotic ones the airlines give you, which are the size and usefulness of a small package of Kleenex.

The problem with having your own pillow is it can make you feel like you are at home when you sleep, which can cause problems if you tend to scratch yourself, or sleep naked, or in my case, both.

Getting up in the middle of your sleep and paddling off to the bathroom can also be awkward on an aircraft, again referring to the naked sleeping part. I don’t recall ever actually doing this, but it will be a few years before they let me fly Air Canada again, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I have a lot more to say about hotels than I do airlines, so I have assembled them in humourous David Letterman Top Ten List format:

Top 10 Things that Make a Great Hotel:

10. Shower head is higher on the wall than my nipples. (Business travelers less than 6 feet tall may ignore this item).

9. Long hallways with lots of intersections to better facilitate running up and down them in my jammies (or naked as noted above). This one is mainly for my kids. Mainly.

8. Windows that open such that you can lean out and spit on passersby below. Not that, as a mature business man, I would ever do such a thing. This item is mainly for my kids again. Let me just take a moment, though, to offer a sincere apology to any patrons of the Hotel MacDonald in Edmonton, Alberta, from about 1962 to around 1990, upon whom I may have spat from a great height. While deeply sorry for having done so, I must tell you my siblings and I laughed until we peed every time we did this. But – sorry anyway.

7. Hair dryers with cords long enough to stretch to the windows to better facilitate drying of the privates. Actually, never mind about the window thing, I was just kidding. Honestly, officer, it wasn’t me.

6. Receipts that don’t list the movies you actually watched. For the record, let me just say this right now: I don’t watch dirty movies in hotel rooms…all the time.

5. Really great, rough towels and the ability to use every single one of them to dry off your various parts after a shower. Not having to hang them up again is one of life’s delicious joys. FREEDOM!! Using all the towels in ones own home and throwing them all on the floor like you do in hotel rooms can sometimes lead to a frank exchange of viewpoints with ones spouse.

4. Distracted room attendants who happen to leave their trolleys in the hall, filled with the refreshments and snacks that normally you have to pay for. Um de dum de dum…

3. Free local calling and 80 pages worth of escort listings in the yellow pages! Ahem! That particular item I was going to use in the Playboy version of this article. Nevermind! Editor please remove…

2. A pool equipped with squirt guns and other play toys, such that I don’t have to pack my own.

1. The number one thing I like about business hotels: sheets so stiff with starch that your entire body gets exfoliated in one sleep!!

Once this recession is over, perhaps I’ll write about what I like and don’t like about my own business jet (once I get one). Just don’t ever peek in the window if you ever see it at the airport. I may be sleeping.