Packing It In

I’m now three days into this trip and, since I’ve stayed somewhere different every night, I’m fed up with packing and repacking my bag. I had to check a bag for this trip, which I hate to do – airlines employ a high proportion of feckless imbeciles and thieving criminals in their baggage handling departments, so it’s a pleasant surprise when your bag arrives at the same place you do, especially if it’s at about the same time. Of course, having been treated with the utmost respect and care, it will look like two hippopotamus mated on it, and then one of them took a shit on it, but that’s life.

In order to avoid checking a bag you have to get pretty good at packing light. This isn’t too hard to do if you’re doing nothing but business meetings – take one shirt and one set of underwear, multiply by number of days and add in a spare suit and a two ties (in case you drop soup down the first one). If you want to go to the gym (always a good idea) you can add basic workout gear (no lycra – I don’t care how flat it packs). The problems start when you have mixed itineraries that involve combinations of formal business meetings, business casual activities, workouts and casual outdoor stuff. Now no matter how much you try and cut it down you either don’t have the right gear for the occasion or you have to check that bag. Feeling lucky?

Just remember the following:

• Black shoes can go with lots of stuff. Just don’t pack anything that doesn’t go with them. Why do you need two pairs of shoes? Are you a woman? (If the answer is “yes” you can skip the rest of this – your bag is already a lost cause.)
  
• Gifts on the way home take up lots of space. Don’t bring chocolates for people in the office – they probably hate you anyway.
  
• Never travel with just the trousers you have on. This is fate’s cue to seat you next to the baby with colic that just sucked down a pint of milk, or the old woman who’s holding her tomato juice in shaking hands. Or you’ll get served by the flight attendant who tilts the tray so the gravy goes in your lap. (In economy class? Don’t worry – nine micro pretzels won’t leave a stain.)
  
• Stuff only has to “sort of” match. People cut you some slack when you’re on the road. Unless you’re going for an interview, but if this is the case you probably should look somewhere else for advice, genius.
  
• When you go down for breakfast in the hotel, wear last night’s shirt and change it back in your room before you go out. This way you don’t look like a twat when you spill eggs and hot sauce down yourself. This is especially true if you have vital meetings and no extra shirts. People with food stains on themselves cannot be taken seriously.
  
• If you check a bag, black bags always look the same on the airport carousel and yours could be hard to spot. However this is no excuse for tying a bright orange ribbon on the handle. Prick. Since everyone else is tying dumb shit on their bag, just look for the only one that doesn’t look like it belongs to Bozo the Clown.

Of course, no-one who reads this site gives a fuck about how to pack for a business trip, and anyone who really wanted advice on packing for business travel would hardly come here to find it. However, I did once have a (female) colleague whose bag got torn up in transit and all her clothes came down onto the carousel one item at a time (a bra was first – no kidding). This means that no matter whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure your choice of underwear could be revealed for the whole world to see. So if you’re planning to wear white, be sure to wipe properly – no one wants to see that in the airport.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison