Excuses to Get Out of a Work Trip

Every work trip contains a real meeting and a lot of packaging. The real meeting is ninety minutes long. The packaging is two flights, a hotel an hour from the venue, a dinner at which nothing is decided, and a return leg that eats a second working day. Once you write it out like that, the case for a video call makes itself, and the case is usually financial, which is the language the decision is actually made in. So lead with proportion rather than preference. 'Two flights each way for a two-hour meeting' is a sentence anybody can act on. 'The trip costs more than the deal it's about' is stronger still, and if you can put a rough number on it, better again. If the customer is genuinely expecting a face, offer the person whose face it should be: 'sending Marcus, he's on the account and I'd be the second most useful person in the room' solves their problem instead of merely declining it. And there are the boring immovable ones, which are the most effective of the lot. Visa lead times are six weeks. Passport renewals are in a queue nobody can see. Below are ten excuses to get out of a work trip, plus twenty in the generator.