When my boss told me that my task description was going to be changing I never imagined how much.
I have worked for the same dealer for the last 15 years and as a salesman I was assigned to a small part located just on the other side of town, and i could entirely cover my entire route in a day so I spent a lot of time in the office as well, and when my boss told me that they were promoting me to a regional sales person I was unaware of how substantial my part would become.
I now spend about three nights out of the week on the road and this involves staying in various hotels. I am still trying to familiarize myself with the areas where I have to stay and trying to find a sufficient hotel that has quality accommodations has been difficult. I have an expense account which covers my lodging but they require me to keep my nightly stays under a certain dollar amount, this means that I must stay at hotels or motels that are less than five stars and sporadically these locales can be downright uncomfortable. The fact that they have mid-range beds is one thing but when they have Heating and A/C systems that don’t work properly that becomes a real problem. Many of the national chains are a better bad because they are at least regulated in some ways and you can rely on most of them to have the same basic systems in each room. If you stay in a locally-owned, small motel you may find that the owners don’t keep up with Heating and A/C service and the greater chains do. So far I’ve learned about a few that I need to avoid and I hope to have the whole lodging situation figured out better soon.