I’m getting ready for my President’s Club trip starting tomorrow, and it seems odd to say this, but I’m not sure what to think of it. When Chris and I travel, we never do resort vacations where we lounge by a pool or on a beach; we’re constantly out and about, trying new restaurants, seeing different sights, going down random alleyways and finding interesting bars, nooks and crannies. With this trip, I’ll mostly be on the resort property, and so it’s a strange departure from my version of “normal” travel.

In preparation, since I’m not sure how much downtime I will have given I’ll be around colleagues on and off, I downloaded two books, have a third book on a Kindle, and have a video editing course to do online. I know I’m supposed to be at President’s Club to socialize with my colleagues, but outside of maybe three or four of them, I want to minimize my time with colleagues outside of the group welcome reception, dinner, and shared activities. If this feels too much like work, it won’t be a real vacation.

Our office here in New York is still small enough so that when someone is out, everyone seems to notice. I haven’t been in the office since last Wednesday, so when I am away for a while, I tend to get pings from colleagues asking me when I am going to come back, even though they know how long I will be away since I announce it on our team’s Slack channel. Several colleagues said that it was overall a heavy travel week, as the office was quite empty. And I felt it myself when I came back this morning to barely five people there.

So then I thought about my thoughts earlier this week about being spoiled with all the free snacks and food we get in our office, and I thought, wow, sometimes, all that food can really just go to waste, especially when no one is even here to enjoy it!

After two nearly back to back trips out of state, this morning, I had to wake up to get to Penn Station to take Amtrak out to Trenton, from which I would grab an Uber to Ewing, New Jersey, where one of my customers is headquartered. I would be there for over five hours in different training sessions and meetings to discuss how the team could better leverage their technology subscription with us.

It’s funny to think that travel to cities like Orlando or Chicago would somehow be easier from New York City than travel to Ewing, New Jersey. Jersey is right next door to New York. There’s little reason that it should be so cumbersome to get to even the most random cities there, yet somehow, it is. It wasn’t clear to me whether I should take New Jersey Transit, which would have taken over two hours, or Amtrak, which would take about one hour. My colleagues who live in Jersey strongly advised me not to take NJ Transit because “it may never arrive!” And the roundtrip train ticket cost a whooping $126, which is total insanity. Why should it cost this much??

When I was there, I half jokingly suggested to them that for our next set of trainings, I could host them in our Flatiron offices. Only the customers traveling from LA seemed enthused by that idea.

I had my last customer meeting here in Chicago during this trip this morning, which ended with my colleague and me taking our customer group out for lunch at a nearby, very corporate lunch spot. It was a fairly standard American menu, with different sections for wraps, sandwiches, salads, and burgers. The majority of us at the table ordered salads, and when they arrived, I couldn’t believe how large they were. This could easily have fed three of us, and I felt horrible at the thought of having to waste nearly half of this massive plate at the end, even if I would be expensing the entire meal. When our lunch was done, zero people at my table finished their salads, and most were barely even half eaten.

I understand why people oftentimes get annoyed at eating salad as your meal because they don’t think they are filling, but at the same time, I do not think you compensate for that by just making the salad astronomically bigger, even if it’s with additional avocado, tomatoes, or chicken. The amount of food waste in this country is ridiculous and so indicative of how spoiled and privileged we are, and if only there was a way to actually ask for a specific portion of said salad, that would be the very beginning of restaurants wasting less.

When I go visit customers at their offices, I’m oftentimes reminded by the fact that I’m extremely spoiled where I work in that not only do I get free lunch of whatever I want that will deliver to my office via Seamless, but we also have endless snacks, both healthy and unhealthy, as well as juices, nut milks, cow milks (of varying fat percentages), soy milks, and even now oat milks (in two fat varieties, as well). We have green tea, cold brew coffee, and ginger kombucha on tap, and the latest addition to our “on tap” series is a California Cabernet Sauvignon that our head of sales is obsessed with and asked our office manager to get. Most offices I am visiting barely have water, coffee, and non-dairy creamer.

I was onsite at McDonald’s headquarters today, and even though they are McDonald’s, no, contrary to what my colleagues joke with me about, you cannot just go to the kitchen and get McNuggets or a sausage egg McMuffin just like that. Yes, there is an endless soda stream and water, but that’s really it. However, they were very kind to offer me lunch today, and no, not a quarter-pounder, but actually delivered sweetgreen, the trendy D.C.-based salad company that makes salad actually seem like a delicious treat.

As the delivery came as I was getting my computer set up for my training, I had a small chuckle to myself at the thought that here at McDonald’s, the epitome of bad-for-you fast food, my team was all eating sweetgreen and feeding me with sweetgreen, as well. The irony to me was hilarious.

I traveled to Chicago tonight for some customer meetings I’ll be having the next two days, and when I originally searched for flights and hotel, I was shocked to see how expensive hotels were in the city this week — the cheapest hotel I could find in the general vicinity was at least $390+/night, which would be completely out of the realm of what I’d be allowed to expense and get reimbursed for. I ended up finding a deal for $282/night, which still sounds insane, but at least would be within my company’s limits. That was two weeks ago; a colleague who would be accompanying me tried to search just days before our scheduled travel, and the cheapest hotel he could find was over $680/night! I later found out that a number of big conferences were happening in the city this week, and one of them was actually being hosted at the hotel where I am staying.

It’s pretty absurd to me to think that normal, everyday people could afford hotel rights such as these, and even more absurd to think that some companies would actually allow their employees to expense hotels that would be that expensive. If you were to stay in Chicago at that latter rate for just two nights, you’d already be over $1200, and for some people, that’s rent money for an entire month!

When I am at the airport, I am on the move. In fact, I think everyone who is at an airport should be on the move. And when I say that, what I mean is… aren’t you there because you have a destination in mind that you need to get to? And that should involve not dawdling and blocking entire aisles and escalators when other people need to get through. I always thought that the accepted and standard escalator etiquette is to stand on one side, ensure all your luggage is on your same side, to then allow others who are passing you to… pass. Well, I’ve already transited the airport three times during this one trip, and it seems like people don’t seem to understand this. That, or that instead of one person and his luggage blocking the entire escalator, that his travel companion would insist on standing right beside him.

Maybe before anyone travels, he should be prepped on all the standard etiquette around not pissing off other travelers.

I’m in Orlando for the next two days for work, and after finishing the day’s work from the hotel room this late afternoon, I started doing some quick research on what was good to eat that is walking distance from my hotel in downtown Orlando. Unfortunately, I ended up staying at a hotel which is on the grungier side of downtown: I’m right by a ton of construction, blocked off sidewalks, and a number of entrances to interstates and highways. I had to walk 5 blocks extra just to get to the sushi restaurant I planned to eat at simply because the entire area was not made suitable for anyone walking. As cars sped by me, I noticed some of them looking at my oddly. Why is she walking in Orlando? Everyone is driving here!

Then I remembered how I always so quickly forget but then am immediately reminded how unfriendly to pedestrians this entire country is outside of cities like New York, San Francisco, or Boston. These cities and this country wasn’t really built for people to walk and get around carless. So why is it any wonder that the obesity rate is getting worse and worse here?!

I arrived at the airport this morning wondering what I’d be getting for breakfast. Lucky for me, the American Airlines terminal is actually pretty good for food at the Miami International Airport. There are a number of Cuban eateries where you can get local food at decent prices. When I arrived at the area closest to my gate, I noticed a nearly weaving line coming out of one of the eateries, and it ended up being the sole Cuban spot within reasonable walking distance without getting back on the terminal air train. Au Bon Pain, Manchu Wok, you name it — all the other spots didn’t even have one or two people getting food there. But this place had over 15 people in line, waiting for everything from a ham and cheese Cuban sandwich to guava strudels to cafe con leche. I begrudgingly got into the line, which I noticed moved pretty quickly, and ordered my Cuban breakfast sandwich, cafe con leche, and pan de bono. I think I was the only person in line who ordered in English. As I burned my tongue with my cafe con leche, I thought to myself, only in Miami would something like this ever happen, where people would only get into this particular line for food, mostly order in Spanish, and act as though no other places offered food.

I don’t usually have very much time here in Miami to explore since I come for work, but in that moment, I felt very lucky to be able to come here as often as I do and experience things just like this.

After last night’s disappointing meal, I was wondering what we had in store tonight for our second customer dinner in a row. This customer chose a Peruvian place on the exact same block in Doral as last night’s dinner, so clearly in this very new suburb, the “hip” area was really all on one block. Tonight’s customer we were meeting for the very first time. I had no idea what to expect of him other than the two phone calls we’d had, plus the email exchanges that have all been to-the-point.

“Is there anything you don’t eat?” I asked him as we sat down.

“Nope, I’m not picky at all,” he said, clearly eager to start ordering and eating. “I eat and like everything!”

“Do you like spicy food?” my colleague asked. “Can we get the hot ceviche?”

“Ya, I like heat!” the customer responded.

My colleague and I both looked at each other and smiled. We already liked this guy, but now, we just liked him that much more.

It’s always a crap shoot when you’re taking customers out. You can’t be as blunt with them as you can with your own friends or colleagues where you can critique them or make fun of them for their foibles, what they like and don’t like, especially when you are all new to each other. With customers, I’ve heard everything from they don’t eat animals with more than two legs to a deep hatred of mushrooms to they only eat eggs cooked with the eggs and whites together. It’s a relief, especially when you share dishes, when you can order and eat everything you want without walking on egg shells to suggest the next thing to get.

And in the end, tonight’s meal was delicious, a far cry from last night’s.