If you are a corporate drone like most of us (and chances are, sadly, that you are), then it happens at least once during your tenure: the dreaded company trip. Entirely on the company's dime (cigarettes, alcohol, prostitutes, and police bribes excluded), you are required to fly to some bullshit multi-day event, far away from your established comfort zone. You could be participating in what the company considers "training" (i.e. spacing out all day in an environment unique to your cubicle while somebody rambles on all day about something you will never use during your actual job). Maybe you're attending a seminar, which likely consists of a room filled equal parts yes men and those like you, whose good nature has been systematically beaten into the ground, becoming some bastard child of cynicism and misanthropy. Hell, maybe you're out there because the manager needs a peon to carry their bags while they diligently send emails on their blackberry to you, obviously not in the office as you stand next to them, demanding that you email those reports ASAP. Fucking douchebags.

As my particular journey did not fall into any of those three categories, I will instead cover the basics of a typical company trip that I learned when away. Maybe another article will cover the other thing I learned--Why California is Horribly Overrated.

If you're lucky during your plane ride, you will get the best service available, share intimate conversations with only the most entertaining and enlightening of individuals, and the view of Earth from 38,000 feet will remind you that most of your problems are petty and myopic--like how you keep getting piss spots on your pants after zip-up at the office urinal and have to violently scrub off the wet marks before a coworker walks in and thinks you have the pissing skills of a drunk Michael J. Fox.

But then you don't get a window seat, and all of your problems still matter. Also, your trip will most likely consist of being squeezed into a space that makes a coffin look like the Canis Major void, getting served a 9 dollar box of 2 dollar food that a raccoon would have second thoughts about, and having to keep yourself busy with Hemisphere magazine because the people on each side of you are as eager to hold a conversation as they are young and in shape. When you get seated next to an old couple who left an empty seat in between them in the hopes that it wouldn't get booked, and then hear them say (rather loudly), "Look at all of these empty seats in front of us...guess we didn't get lucky this time" in a gruff, passive-aggressive tone, you know this will be a long flight.

Unless you are an employee with the word "senior" in your title, your hotel will come with its own set of problems. The room will feel like a meat locker when you first enter, possibly because the hotel staff knows that you're just another stiff, and you only have a 30% chance that your air conditioning controls are easily accessible and/or in working order. You also run the risk of getting one of the hotels that filters the minerals out of its water--you know, those necessary little microscopic particles your body needs in order to actually scrub the bullshit off your skin. You'll know this is the case when you leave a 10 minute, piping hot shower and feel like you're covered in snots (and not feel like a sunning elephant, like you're supposed to).

Since I'm feeling pretty jetlagged and disinterested while writing this, I'm going to cap it off with a few lessons that I learned/remembered from traveling:

-Mexicans DO hang out in front of hardware stores
-Nobody has Comedy Central, anywhere
-Chicago's airport really fucking hates smokers
-California's crossword puzzles include area-centric bullshit, like Jewish words and political figures
-The Prius is so bad it enjoys the smell of IT'S own farts
-There's twice as much empty landscape in the U.S. than settled parts
-I never thought that I'd actually miss Pennsylvania!

-Bizob