Traveling downtime

[tractor]

I've been on the road for work quite a bit lately, however my flight schedule always seems to leave several hours of down time. I'm getting tired of just sitting at the airport with nothing to do (I could do some work on my laptop, but I have no pressing deadlines). Should I feel guilty that I'm getting paid to take long naps? I'm salaried so my hours don't matter, although I always include my down time as hours worked, do you do the same? These are hours I'm traveling for work and not sitting on the couch at home.

[Phoenix84]

No, you shouldn't feel guilty.  Traveling is part of your job, and you should be compensated accordingly.

I travel for work.  Sometimes I get the same feelings, like "I'm getting paid to sit in airports and on airplanes and listen to audio books and surf the web on my phone."  But as I said, it's part of the job.

If I travel on a weekend, or more hours than I owe my employer in a workday (i.e. I am supposed to work 9 hours but I travel for 12) I get the extra time as travel comp.  Travel comp is leave that I can bank and take at a later time. 

[tractor]

Oct 18, 2016 7:15:47 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

No, you shouldn't feel guilty.  Traveling is part of your job, and you should be compensated accordingly.

I travel for work.  Sometimes I get the same feelings, like "I'm getting paid to sit in airports and on airplanes and listen to audio books and surf the web on my phone."  But as I said, it's part of the job.

If I travel on a weekend, or more hours than I owe my employer in a workday (i.e. I am supposed to work 9 hours but I travel for 12) I get the extra time as travel comp.  Travel comp is leave that I can bank and take at a later time. 

At least you get comp time, I don't get that bonus, if I did I would have a ton of hours in the bank (I often travel on Sundays to get to Monday morning meetings).

[countrygirl]

My husband traveled for years and years. Airport time was part of it, they did figure travel days

but I think he was paid at a different rate, honestly, don't remember now. He worked 6 days a

week for years, sometimes 7.

[Rukh O'Rorke]

Oct 18, 2016 7:19:19 GMT -5 tractor said:

Oct 18, 2016 7:15:47 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

No, you shouldn't feel guilty.  Traveling is part of your job, and you should be compensated accordingly.

I travel for work.  Sometimes I get the same feelings, like "I'm getting paid to sit in airports and on airplanes and listen to audio books and surf the web on my phone."  But as I said, it's part of the job.

If I travel on a weekend, or more hours than I owe my employer in a workday (i.e. I am supposed to work 9 hours but I travel for 12) I get the extra time as travel comp.  Travel comp is leave that I can bank and take at a later time. 

At least you get comp time, I don't get that bonus, if I did I would have a ton of hours in the bank (I often travel on Sundays to get to Monday morning meetings).

lol! at least your meetings are on mondays!

I get no comp time, and have frequent Saturday and Sunday meetings. Sometimes I am with clients for 12 or more hours on a given day. Meeting are usually not more than 9 hours, but I have to do breakfast and dinner with the clients. One time, I did have a weekend day meeting last 16 hours. Fun times!

Several times a year, I have to work 12 days straight because of the weekend, sometimes getting home at 10pm sunday, and going in to work on Monday.

Frankly, I get a little pissy about it sometimes....

This year - I'm going to lose about 2 weeks vacation time or even more that I can't carry over.

But - as I mentioned on a previous thread - I can not and will not complain about any amount of work currently - due to fear about who they might hire!

[Anne_in_VA]

Don't feel guilty, it's part of your job.  I used to travel quite a bit for my job and usually left on Sunday for Monday meetings, then spent another whole day traveling back home later in the week.  I never got any comp time for all the extra hours and since I'm salaried, I don't nugget extra compensation.  

[alabamagal]

A lot depends on how you think of your job, how you are paid and what kind of job you have.

I have never had a job where I had to travel more than once a month.  General guidance was that 1/2 of travel should be on personal time, 1/2 on company time.  Might mean leaving Sunday for Monday meeting then returning trip during day, or leaving on very early flight Monday morning.  I was also never on a job that counted hours.  If I get in late on a work night, I likely will not be at work at 8am, I will show up when I show up.  never had a boss that had an issue with it.

For several years I worked in a position that would require overseas travel 2-3 times per year for times ranging from 1 to 4 weeks.  I got to visit some interesting places in Europe during this time period, all paid by company.  I worked hard, but also had some great experiences, paid for by my company.  One trip I went with some colleagues to visit a company in the middle of the Swiss Alps.  When we arrived, the company reps apologized and said they had recently discovered a problem with a raw material and it would take them a week to get replacement.  Called my boss and told him the situation.  It would not have made sense to travel back to US and then return a week later, so he told us just to stay.  WooHoo - company paid for all hotels and meals, we had already purchased unlimited rail passes, so basically a company paid vacation!  It was middle of summer so no skiing (I'm not a snow skier anyway), but we got to travel all over Switzerland and some to Italy.  After a week we returned to work, and did have to stay an extra week due to the delay.  I was over there 4 weeks, and considered it 4 weeks of work.  I did probably actually work for 4 weeks of hours in the last 3 weeks though. 

[tractor]

Since I'm salaried, my hours don't really matter, but I always include after meeting functions such as dinner/mixers with my peers where we exchange ideas and discuss common problems/solutions. Often this results in me "working" 14+ hour days when I'm on the road. My boss gets upset because this often reflects a 70+ hour work week when I'm on the road and I average more hours per year than he does. As far as I'm concerned, every function I go to when I'm traveling for work counts as working hours. I feel this is normal, but what do you think?

I also think my salary is too low and I'm working on that, although if I go too much higher, I will be paid more than my boss, and he doesn't like that either (although I have more experience than he has).

[milee]

Every industry and job is different, so I'm not sure it's really relevant what my or others' experience is.

FWIW, I can't imagine ever having enough free time to choose a nap in the airport instead of work (or talking with colleagues.)  Any of my jobs have always included so much work to do that "finding" a few quiet hours to get caught up on laptop/paperwork is golden, so I'd be taking advantage of those layovers to get work done.  When I was a financial consultant for a big international firm, they had travel policies that I felt were incredibly unfair to the employees.  Although we were assigned jobs all over the country - so did extensive traveling - none of the travel time could be charged as working time unless you were actually doing "work" work.  So a nap in the airport wouldn't be chargeable, but if you spent the 2 hours working on reports, that could be charged.  I had weeks where I spent 20 hours or more traveling (flying, driving, whatever) between clients and none of that was chargeable; that was a real killer on top of already being expected to put in 60 hours of "work" work.  

I'm not sure I understand the comment about including after meeting functions such as dinner/mixers.  Do you mean you're charging that time in as work?  That seems a bit of a grey area.  Yes, at dinner or drinks you might talk about work with peers but it seems a stretch to charge this time in as formal work.  

Then again, most of my experience with time tracking was with work that then used that time tracking to bill clients, so we were scrupulously honest and conservative about charging time.  If it wasn't 100% productive time that a client would think was reasonable to be charged for, then we didn't record that time.  Although there was a time code for admin type work, that was closely tracked and if an employee ended up charging too many hours to admin (nonchargeable work), it would impact their raise and promotion possibilities since it implied they weren't efficient or were spending too much time on non-value added tasks.

Another poster mentioned that their company does comp time for travel, which seems fair.   

[Phoenix84]

Oct 18, 2016 11:20:11 GMT -5 milee said:

Every industry and job is different, so I'm not sure it's really relevant what my or others' experience is.

FWIW, I can't imagine ever having enough free time to choose a nap in the airport instead of work (or talking with colleagues.)  Any of my jobs have always included so much work to do that "finding" a few quiet hours to get caught up on laptop/paperwork is golden, so I'd be taking advantage of those layovers to get work done.  When I was a financial consultant for a big international firm, they had travel policies that I felt were incredibly unfair to the employees.  Although we were assigned jobs all over the country - so did extensive traveling - none of the travel time could be charged as working time unless you were actually doing "work" work.  So a nap in the airport wouldn't be chargeable, but if you spent the 2 hours working on reports, that could be charged.  I had weeks where I spent 20 hours or more traveling (flying, driving, whatever) between clients and none of that was chargeable; that was a real killer on top of already being expected to put in 60 hours of "work" work.  

I'm not sure I understand the comment about including after meeting functions such as dinner/mixers.  Do you mean you're charging that time in as work?  That seems a bit of a grey area.  Yes, at dinner or drinks you might talk about work with peers but it seems a stretch to charge this time in as formal work.  

Then again, most of my experience with time tracking was with work that then used that time tracking to bill clients, so we were scrupulously honest and conservative about charging time.  If it wasn't 100% productive time that a client would think was reasonable to be charged for, then we didn't record that time.  Although there was a time code for admin type work, that was closely tracked and if an employee ended up charging too many hours to admin (nonchargeable work), it would impact their raise and promotion possibilities since it implied they weren't efficient or were spending too much time on non-value added tasks.

Another poster mentioned that their company does comp time for travel, which seems fair.   

That was me, and I work for the federal government.

It's a different kind of comp time. You get comp time, but it expires after a year.  Still, after reading these posts, I feel lucky to have it.

Regarding dinners and the like, as government regulators, we're actively discouraged from having meals with the people we regulate.

ETA Oh Snap!  The zombie game is back.  mmmmm, Milee Brains

[flamingo]

When I travel for work, I also include the after hours/after meeting functions as work time. I'm salaried and don't report my time anywhere, but I'm only doing it to network/continue the work conversation/etc and it really is work. Again, though, I don't have to account for my hours.

I don't get travel comp time, but I'm not required to schedule flights on my own time either. For example, there is a conference i go to yearly. i could easily work a fully day Tuesday, and leave after work Tuesday since the conference starts Wednesday morning. But I don't. I use Tuesday as a travel day and don't go into the office. I can do a lot of my work from my cell phone or laptop, but there are times I sit in the airport reading a book or playing games instead. Sometimes, i just need that mental break.

[movingforward]

Nope, airport time is part of it.  It's not like you WANT to be sitting around in an airport doing nothing. 

For me, there is only so much work I can do in the airport.  I can check emails, maybe work on some excel files, etc. but a lot of stuff needs to be done "at work."  So I get paid to sit around and read books at the airport.  I don't feel bad about it.  The job is the one who needs me to be in a different place at a certain time so...
 

[movingforward]

Oct 18, 2016 11:20:11 GMT -5 milee said:

Every industry and job is different, so I'm not sure it's really relevant what my or others' experience is.

FWIW, I can't imagine ever having enough free time to choose a nap in the airport instead of work (or talking with colleagues.)  Any of my jobs have always included so much work to do that "finding" a few quiet hours to get caught up on laptop/paperwork is golden, so I'd be taking advantage of those layovers to get work done.  When I was a financial consultant for a big international firm, they had travel policies that I felt were incredibly unfair to the employees.  Although we were assigned jobs all over the country - so did extensive traveling - none of the travel time could be charged as working time unless you were actually doing "work" work.  So a nap in the airport wouldn't be chargeable, but if you spent the 2 hours working on reports, that could be charged.  I had weeks where I spent 20 hours or more traveling (flying, driving, whatever) between clients and none of that was chargeable; that was a real killer on top of already being expected to put in 60 hours of "work" work.  

I'm not sure I understand the comment about including after meeting functions such as dinner/mixers.  Do you mean you're charging that time in as work?  That seems a bit of a grey area.  Yes, at dinner or drinks you might talk about work with peers but it seems a stretch to charge this time in as formal work.  

Then again, most of my experience with time tracking was with work that then used that time tracking to bill clients, so we were scrupulously honest and conservative about charging time.  If it wasn't 100% productive time that a client would think was reasonable to be charged for, then we didn't record that time.  Although there was a time code for admin type work, that was closely tracked and if an employee ended up charging too many hours to admin (nonchargeable work), it would impact their raise and promotion possibilities since it implied they weren't efficient or were spending too much time on non-value added tasks.

Another poster mentioned that their company does comp time for travel, which seems fair.   

Speaking for me personally, I agree it is a grey area.  This is how I do it...if I am attending a conference and there are optional evening social events that I attend I only consider the actual education portion of the conference to be work.  I don't consider me showing up at an optional mixer to be work; however, if I have a vendor that walks up to me at the conference and says they would like to take me to dinner to discuss the contract for next year then I consider that to be work.  If the boss asks me to attend a social event that I wouldn't normally attend then that is also work.  Essentially, anything that I don't CHOOSE to attend on my own I consider to be work. 

ETA: It doesn't matter for me because I am salaried but I have had to attend a few miserable social events that I would never have attended if it wasn't expected.  In my mind they were work because I certainly would not have sat through 3 hours of boring ass conversation about Rolex watches otherwise

[alabamagal]

I would almost never consider any evening social/dinner to be "work time".  But I don't really count my hours anyway.

I am project manager on a large project on site.  We are contracted with an engineering firm to do the design.  When the design team is on site (maybe once every other month) their manager will usually invite me to dinner the evening before if they are in town.  My boss will encourage me to attend and will try to attend herself.  She has bailed on most of them because she has kids at home, I don't.  I don't consider it part of my job, but I will almost always attend.  Usually 10% of the time may be discussing the project, but it is usually more along the lines of "How do you think we are doing."  The rest of the time is just social or industry talk.  And I usually get a nice dinner out of it.

Last month I attended a training session away from home, there were about 50 engineers there from various company location.  They had evening social/dinners 2 of the evenings, optional.  I attended both.  I met people who are in similar positions in my organizations and also talked to 2 individuals in the US headquarters who I could potentially be working for in a couple years.  It had little to do with my day-to-day work, but was great networking and may help me down the line in my job search.  Plus one evening was at a craft brewery within walking distance of the hotel  .

There is a young engineer in my group who will usually not attend these types of events.  He is very picky about food (think eating Chick-fil-A and pizza only).  Does it affect his job performance - probably not - but I think it does impact his relationships with others.

[Deleted]

I traveled to Latin America and around the US a lot in my 20's for work and had a lot of down time due to flight schedules but never felt bad about it.  I was lucky to have those travel opportunities in my 20's, I basically got to travel to all kinds of great places for free because a lot of times I would stay the weekend after the work was completed and get a mini vacation, I didn't have a ton of money at that point so I was able to experience a lot of different places that I couldn't have afforded on my own because airfare was covered.

Now I mostly just travel in the US but I still take advantage by staying a couple of extra days when flying somewhere for work, I get to go to Orange County next week.

[wvugurl26]

If I travel on Sunday I get comp time. Last time I had travel for training and had to work early every morning and each evening I tracked it. I added in my travel to the total and took my 8 hours for Friday out. The remaining 9 are sitting in my comp balance. I generally end up using comp time to leave a hour or two early because I need to be somewhere. I also these days 99.99% of the time travel alone for work. Typically when I reach my destination I connect with people from other offices. My office has been cut in half since I started 6 years ago so we aren't typically traveling to the same things unless it's a local conference. Being in the DC/Baltimore area we tend to get a handful of those per year.

I need to do some stuff tonight when I get home from training. I probably won't take it as comp. I figure the 20-30 minutes wash out on those days where I'm 15-20 minutes late because traffic sucks or I just couldn't get myself out of bed and moving.

If I traveled more than a couple times a year I would get a lounge pass. I do have pre-check/global entry.

[tractor]

I do think it's different if you are billing for your time versus just salaried. I worked as a consultant for 20 years and had to account for every 0.1 hour I worked, of course anything client related was billable. In those instances I wouldn't have charged my clients for dinner/social events, as I was often the one picking up the tab. I'm now in a non-billable position with a utility company so they don't care how much time I work, but it's the perception issue. Yesterday was a long day of meetings, with a dinner/social function afterward at which we discussed random plans and strategies for the next few months. I put down 12 hours of "work" time, my co-worker only put down 8 because she doesn't think the after meeting time counts. We're both salaried. This is was prompted my initial inquiry just trying to gauge how others do it. Due to flight issues, I'm stuck here in the airport for another three hours, it will be 11pm before I arrive at my final airport, and another hour home. I plan to call all of those hours "work" making it a 17 hour day today.

I will probably still be at the office by 8 tomorrow morning even though I will have 42 hours in by the time I get home tonight.

[Anne_in_VA]

I also think it depends on if you need to submit a time sheet.  I'm salaried, so I don't submit one, but YMMV.

[tskeeter]

Oct 18, 2016 11:20:11 GMT -5 milee said:

Every industry and job is different, so I'm not sure it's really relevant what my or others' experience is.

FWIW, I can't imagine ever having enough free time to choose a nap in the airport instead of work (or talking with colleagues.)  Any of my jobs have always included so much work to do that "finding" a few quiet hours to get caught up on laptop/paperwork is golden, so I'd be taking advantage of those layovers to get work done.  When I was a financial consultant for a big international firm, they had travel policies that I felt were incredibly unfair to the employees.  Although we were assigned jobs all over the country - so did extensive traveling - none of the travel time could be charged as working time unless you were actually doing "work" work.  So a nap in the airport wouldn't be chargeable, but if you spent the 2 hours working on reports, that could be charged.  I had weeks where I spent 20 hours or more traveling (flying, driving, whatever) between clients and none of that was chargeable; that was a real killer on top of already being expected to put in 60 hours of "work" work.  

I'm not sure I understand the comment about including after meeting functions such as dinner/mixers.  Do you mean you're charging that time in as work?  That seems a bit of a grey area.  Yes, at dinner or drinks you might talk about work with peers but it seems a stretch to charge this time in as formal work.  

Then again, most of my experience with time tracking was with work that then used that time tracking to bill clients, so we were scrupulously honest and conservative about charging time.  If it wasn't 100% productive time that a client would think was reasonable to be charged for, then we didn't record that time.  Although there was a time code for admin type work, that was closely tracked and if an employee ended up charging too many hours to admin (nonchargeable work), it would impact their raise and promotion possibilities since it implied they weren't efficient or were spending too much time on non-value added tasks.

Another poster mentioned that their company does comp time for travel, which seems fair.   

In respect to work related dinners and the like, I consider it work time.  Depending on your job and other considerations, work dinners and work related social activities can easily add up to as much as a day or more a week.  If it is not time that you can do as you please in the location you please, it's work time.

My Dad was a small town school administrator.  He wasn't at all those football and basketball games, theater performances, choir concerts, band concerts, parents nights, etc. because he preferred those activities to relaxing at home.  He was there because it was part of his job.  And he wasn't working on Chamber of Commerce, Lions Club, or Rotary meetings and projects because he had nothing else to do with his time.  It was part of his job.

For a couple of years I had a job where I made week long trips multiple times a month.  Often I flew out on Sunday afternoon and home late on Friday night.  After a week out of town, the next weekend was always a mad scramble trying to get everything done over the weekend that most people would do in evenings after work.  Because I was out of town, I couldn't do those things during the week and often had less that two days to get them done before I left town again.

If a work related activity interferes with using the time as you would choose, it's work time. Whether it is billable hours or not.

[naughtybear]

My ex travelled a lot and though he didn't have to account hours he did include dinners (networking etc) as work and he said it got exhausting.

[NoNamePerson]

Oct 18, 2016 7:05:20 GMT -5 tractor said:

I've been on the road for work quite a bit lately, however my flight schedule always seems to leave several hours of down time. I'm getting tired of just sitting at the airport with nothing to do (I could do some work on my laptop, but I have no pressing deadlines). Should I feel guilty that I'm getting paid to take long naps? I'm salaried so my hours don't matter, although I always include my down time as hours worked, do you do the same? These are hours I'm traveling for work and not sitting on the couch at home.

If you have to ask??

[hoops902]

Oct 18, 2016 7:19:19 GMT -5 tractor said:

Oct 18, 2016 7:15:47 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

No, you shouldn't feel guilty.  Traveling is part of your job, and you should be compensated accordingly.

I travel for work.  Sometimes I get the same feelings, like "I'm getting paid to sit in airports and on airplanes and listen to audio books and surf the web on my phone."  But as I said, it's part of the job.

If I travel on a weekend, or more hours than I owe my employer in a workday (i.e. I am supposed to work 9 hours but I travel for 12) I get the extra time as travel comp.  Travel comp is leave that I can bank and take at a later time. 

At least you get comp time, I don't get that bonus, if I did I would have a ton of hours in the bank (I often travel on Sundays to get to Monday morning meetings).

So if you don't get comp time, then I'd feel far less guilty about "getting paid to take long naps". I'm salaried, we all count "travel days" as just normal work days in terms of hours worked, whether we're working or not. As an exempt employee all that matters is that the work that needs to get done actually gets done (I mean that's the whole point of being able to get someone to work 80 hours without overtime, you're giving them the autonomy to manage their work right?). Any hours I'm traveling count towards work hours, traveling meaning "anytime I'm away from home on a work trip".

I just got back from a 3 week trip to India for work.  Some days I'd go into the offices there for 8-10 hours.  Other days I'd go in for a couple of hours to do a few things, then I'd head back to the hotel and check email sporadically...both counted the exact same in terms of being a work day.

[Miss Tequila]

I have travelled internationally quite a bit over the last five years and I don't feel bad about any down time I might be lucky enough to get at an airport. I am salaried and do not prepare timesheets (I honestly don't see the point unless you are billing out your time) but I work even more than normal when I'm travelling.

I always have to go out for dinner with either staff or consultants when I travel. Again, I don't prepare timesheets so I don't count or not count this time. More often than not I would prefer to go back to the hotel but the expectation is there for dinner/drinks.

[rob base]

Oct 27, 2016 14:55:00 GMT -5 Miss Tequila said:

I have travelled internationally quite a bit over the last five years and I don't feel bad about any down time I might be lucky enough to get at an airport. I am salaried and do not prepare timesheets (I honestly don't see the point unless you are billing out your time) but I work even more than normal when I'm travelling.

I always have to go out for dinner with either staff or consultants when I travel. Again, I don't prepare timesheets so I don't count or not count this time. More often than not I would prefer to go back to the hotel but the expectation is there for dinner/drinks.

How do I get to be one of ur consultants?

[Deleted]

I have a kind of side gig for a couple months every year, kind of related to my real job, but not really. Makes perfect sense, right? Lol. Anyway, I have to go to a seminar once a year, just did this a few weeks ago. 

I was sitting in an airport for a while on a Sunday and it didn't occur to me to try to be productive during that time lol. I was too busy being annoyed at sitting in an airport. I HATE waiting.

My evenings were also booked. Not a big deal to me. There's always entertainment, dinner and wine.

Maybe if I had to travel more often I'd view it differently. As it is, I look forward to visiting a a different city every year with all my expenses covered, plus a paycheck. It helps that the seminar, while it is work, it isn't all uptight and boring.

[tcu2003]

I'm salaried, but I do have to do time sheets as I'm an engineer for a consulting firm, and we bill based on projects, so time is entered (and then billed) in 15 minute increments.

I definitely count time spent waiting in an airport if there is a layover or delays. If I book an 11 am flight instead of an 8 am flight, I don't bill the whole morning, just the couple of hours before the flight where I'm refueling and returning the rental car, going through security, etc. Dinner out with clients? I put it on my timesheet, though it's nearly always overhead and not on a project (which isn't a big deal).