As long-time road warriors, we know a thing or two about stress. The number-one nugget of knowledge we can impart is that it will happen. Count on it. No matter how precisely you micromanage your travels, at some point you will be stuck on a plane going nowhere; the rental car will blow a gasket; or that exotic meal you ate two hours ago will start sending seismic shock waves through your digestive tract in the middle of an important meeting.
You may have the patience of the Buddha in your daily at-home routine, but a few difficult days on the road can morph you into Dirty Harry. While we cannot rescind Murphy’s Law (”If anything can go wrong, it will”), there are many things one can do to handle stress rather than be its victim.
The greatest thing you can do - if at all possible - is to see a snafu as an opportunity. That special restaurant where you were planning to meet a client lost your reservation and is too mobbed to take you? If you’ve got a back-up place in mind, you will be the hero of the day. If you don’t, this could be your chance to ask the client his suggestion…and, better yet, make him the hero of the day.
You arrive in town ravenous, but it’s late at night; all the usual restaurants are closed and hotel room service has shut down. You needn’t eat from the vending machine. Every city has open-all-night diners or cafes, some of them really good, like Jo-Jo’s* in Pittsburgh, Tempo* in Chicago, and the Original Pantry* in Los Angeles. Cab drivers and night clerks know where these places are, but won’t likely suggest them unless you ask.
In general, eating can be a great source of serenity. If your hotel room will not be ready for two hours and you have no immediate appointments, consider not planting yourself in the business center to make phone calls and check e-mail. Instead, find a nearby restaurant that interests you and enjoy the breather from all the demands on your time. It’s a whole lot more relaxing than sitting in the lobby and staring angrily at the registration clerk until the room is ready. And if the snack, meal, tapas or microbrew you discover proves to be a good one, you’ll have something positive to talk about with the locals. That’s much more productive than unloading upon them a tale of traveler’s woes.
A few universally acknowledged ways to handle frustration: In moments of extreme stress (like you are not going to catch a flight and risk missing a vital meeting), remember to breathe, slowly and evenly. If you can (not as easy as it sounds), you’ll suddenly find that you are no longer in panic mode. Our last tip is to pretend you are a travel writer and imagine how you will tell the story about your travails. Make them so melodramatic that you can’t help but laugh at yourself. Remember that you are not locked in a foreign jail with a bowl of spiders to eat and a mud floor on which to sleep. By comparison, the fact that your hotel bed does not have enough fluffy pillows or room service forgot the marmalade for your English muffin will start to seem rather absurd, and you will appreciate how lucky you are to be a business traveler with all the problems success implies. Finally, the question to ask when one more thing goes wrong: In the grand scheme of things, how important is it, really?
Jo-Jo’s: 110 24th, Pittsburgh, PA. 412-261-0280. Open midnight until noon.
Tempo: 6 E. Chestnut St., Chicago, IL. 312-943-4373. Always open.
Original Pantry: 877 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA. 213-972-9279. Always open.
