The client was an idiot. If the decision was to not do anything before Monday morning, the client should have arranged for him to arrive Sunday night.

Oh well, I'm sure that the beancounter shook his head at all this.

The client was an idiot

I'm not so sure. To an IT bod it's an extravagance, but for the client involved ~15k for the confidence of safety net with a guy on the ground is absolute peanuts giving the importance of the event surrounding it.

Client gets to sleep peacefully at night at home, Frank gets to sleep on a bed made of clouds. I think everyone came out on top

I had to go to Monaco for a 10 minute job. Flew reasonably BA and then helicopter transfer from Nice. It was a few days after the Grand Prix so all the advertising boards were still up. I then spent 8 hours in a comms room chasing the customers IT team whilst waiting for a port to be changed to half duplex (yep was a while ago!). Ruined what could have been an awesome jolly.

I was called to Tasmania and the only flight available was first class. And it was lovely.

Humph. The best I've managed is York to Kings Cross and back (1st class seats are nice though)

Been on Virgin Upper a few times, and spent many an hour at the bar upstairs.

Also, the massueuse... what a nice lady.

Our company at the time were migrating lots of remote sites to the new standard, and I had just completed this opco's offices in Rome and had agreed to have my return flight later in the week so I could spend some time there, Alas, got asked if I could head up to Milan as there were noises that it was not going well and they could do with an extra set of hands, so, off I go - Eurostar up (cheap compared to how we get ripped off), and then into my hotel. Same as the team who were there, but my room was like this one. Huge, no expenses spared.

Even another guy from our office was sent over - hot got some crap room/hotel. Thing is, we were not really needed.

Wasted a few days in Rome, but Milan was a good laugh

Once, I was summoned by my new Boss to be the next day at 12:00 in Bratislava, for a critical (life or death) meeting for a prospect. I was THE man !

0 idea of the context, nor the customer, but was told by Boss that "John, will tell you all before the meeting".

I had never met John, who was in another country.

After spending the rest of the day booking flights, I got up a 5am to take the first flight.

I met John in Wien. He asked me about the context, since ... He knew nothing, LOL.

After a life threatening taxi drive from Wien to Bratislava at 150 km/H, on a road with a tree every 10 meters on both sides, and a dodgy surface, we arrived at the prospect.

We shook hands, introduced ourselves and they explained they were after someone to develop apps (Android and other platforms).

John and myself looked at each other and embarrassingly explained that:

- we are IT outsourcing people, not devs

- our company doesn't actually do development, nowhere !!

5 mins later, we were back to the taxi, life threatening drive back to Wien, a drink at the airport and John and me went back to our respective countries.

I arrived back home at 10:30pm, entirely exhausted and spent 10 mins asking what the fuck I had achieved today !

...what the fuck I had achieved today

I gave up on wanting to achieve anything long ago. Also long ago, I was summoned to a meeting with a prospect in Geneva. Due to an unrelated incident, I had spent most of the the night before the meeting in ER. Early morning, treated, showered and feeling well again, I headed to Geneva. Sitting in a café in Geneva and trying to prepare for the meeting, I learnt that my presence was no longer required - a message I received the night before but missed thanks to my stint in the hospital. So, getting the first seat available and heading back home. And only there I realised how high I was flying - drugged to the eyeballs and completely out of my mind, it probably wasn't too bad that I didn't meet the prospect. Achievement of that day: having a cuppa in Geneva.

As the face of IT for traders at a large European bank, I was once sent to a meeting at Euronext's headquarters in Paris by my boss, the head of the investment arm of the bank, without much context - I'd learn about it on location (not a first).

Flown there in the early morning and, when I got to the meeting, all other attendees were the heads (or close enough) of their respective banks or investment arms. It was a meeting about the Euronext's business plans and future directions and a market consultation with their top clients, to which I could not contribute in any meaningful way. Waited for the end, didn't speak to almost anyone as I'd nothing in common with the others and had only spoken to one of the attendees before that day...

At least catering was good, I had a great meal and drinks there, but a tiresome and wasted day anyway

《met John in Wien.》

At least your lot knew that Wien isn't somewhere in/near Denmark. :(

Real effort to keep a straight face when suggesting that to get to Wien it would faster going via Vienna than Copenhagen.

Not talking citizens of the US who think kangaroos are endemic in Austria although I recall after another of Dan Quayle's gaffs along that line an (escaped) wallaby collided with a vehicle in Styria about the time Haider was rising to prominence.

Sobering to consider that if the Quayle from 1990 were a candidate in the 2024 presidential race he would easily be the best candidate.

In various jobs over the years, the default corporate policy has always been cheapest flight, hotel etc, even if it means I lose more billable time to travelling than was saved by not taking the more sensible flight, hotel etc... I have found though that if the client is paying anyway, they're often happy to recommend, if not actually book, somewhere for you. So once "up north", what I was expecting from the price to be a pub B&B turned out to be a country house hotel, and I was greeted at the desk with "oh, we've upgraded you to a suite" :-) And in one European city, where the client's offices as basically in the local version of Slough, I found my hotel was in the local version of Covent Garden, next to the opera house and near the parliament. We *like* that sort of client...

For one of my first ever contracting jobs, the client wanted a face-to-face interview before signing me on. They were based in a beautiful European city and set up the interview for Friday morning. Their support services arranged the flights Thursday evening, hotel, and the airport-hotel and airport-office transfers. The hotel was a grand old art-deco building in the city centre with magnificent views over the adjacent canals, and a fabulously stylish dining room with an even more fabulous menu. After I got the contract, they put me up in that hotel for a couple of weeks while I found a short-term let. Needless to says that was a very enjoyable couple of weeks!!

Even back in those days when such expenses were 'part and parcel', it was above and beyond the normal expectation. Nowadays my impression is that most companies have slashed their budgets for that type of expenses (except for the C-level suits I would bet))

Had similar experiences myself. Working for an IT services company for a major client, service desk delivered from Budapest. There were some teething troubles with knowledge/process not long after it went live, so our company arranged for a number of us senior deskside IT engineers to visit to help iron out the problems and get them on their feet.

The office where the service desk was located was nice and new, the people there were friendly and pleasant, the work went well and took great advantage of our skills and experience.

What made it an unforgettable trip was realising how cheap Budapest is and that a deluxe 5-star hotel in the city was compliant with company travel policy. So, 5 nights in a huge hotel room with marble bathroom, super-king bed and deluxe dining room, plus lots of thoroughly enjoyable nights out around Budapest with colleagues from all across Europe.

To this day it remains one of my most memorable work-trip experiences.

And nearly missed the transfer (since a passenger had been taken ill whilst taxiing from the initial departure airport, so we had to loop back to get them medical treatment. As I got off that plane the screens were saying my next flight was "Boarding - Last Call" at a gate on the other side of the airport.

Never run so fast across an airport in my life - they saw me approaching the gate at a full run, waved me through the door, across the tarmac, up the stairs, closed the door behind me and were taxiing as I took my seat.

The issue - oh that took several days for them to actually fix a timezone error, and then another month for me to clean up the data that had been screwed over.

"a deluxe suite in a top global hotel chain"

So his personal details will have been swept up in a security breach (I'm assuming they've all fallen, irrespective of whether it's been made public or not).

Really nice job if you can get it.

Nothing as grand as this, but as a post-doc I once received a very polite letter from a company in Japan, apologizing for interrupting my busy schedule with their letter (printed on very high quality paper), and then asking me whether I would consider being keynote speaker at a conference they were organizing. The conditions were in a separate note included in the envelope. This entailed three nights in one of the premier suites of a top-end hotel in Tokyo, a business-class ticket, and a very, very handsome lecturers fee for 45 minutes of talking about my research (never been paid better). It didn't take very long to reach a decision to accept that invitation. Once there I got a real red carpet treatment, and the suite I had had a bathroom that was way larger than most hotel rooms I have ever been in. Japanese hospitality is totally amazing.

I think the best I ever managed was at a corporate conference in Amsterdam. The hotel was two rows of town-houses on adjacent streets with the facilities (kitchens, dining, etc.) in the middle.

Getting to my room was "interesting". The place was a rabbit warren with twisting corridors and several staircases (up and down) between reception and my room. When I finally opened the room door I discovered yet another set of stairs up to what was really a suite rather than a room! The bedroom area alone was big enough but there was an elevated lounge/office area at one end and a huge bathroom.

Sadly, in the nature of such conferences, the room was only used for sleeping in and really was wasted on one of the lowliest managers at the event.