Typical Day
Your eyes pop open as an earthquake rocks your hotel room. The temblor isn't very big and it isn't even the first one you've experienced on this particular trip to East Asia, but as you look at your alarm clock and note that it's five in the morning—or is it afternoon?—you know the chances of falling back to sleep are slim to none.
You turn on the bedside lamp and root around for your laptop. In another minute, you're logged into your email and clicking through new messages. There aren't so many—only twenty. And none of them are from angry customers. It's a miracle.
You spend thirty minutes on email and then work on a draft proposal for a client in Argentina. The client is interested in purchasing equipment for a restaurant chain in Buenos Aires, and your job is to pull together the most up-to-date information on the products he wants, the potential cost of the purchase, and so on.
You log on to Skype so you can chat with your counterparts back home who work in engineering, marketing, and service. They're able to feed you most of the information you need, but Ralph in engineering has some stuff he's got to look up. Hopefully, he'll have his notes to you by the end of his day, so you can complete the proposal and send it on to Argentina later.
Before you close your laptop, you take one last look at the presentation you'll be giving today. As an international sales representative with one of the largest restaurant supply manufacturers in the world, one of the requirements of your job is to keep your clients current on upcoming products.
Next year, your company will roll out a new fryer, and you're on this trip to East Asia—you've spent the last fourteen days in Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and now Taipei—to give your clients a preview of the new product, as well as to gather feedback on the proposed fryer and discuss any issues surrounding products in use now.
By 8:00AM—at this point you've figured out that it is indeed 8:00AM local time—you're dressed and ready for your day. You head downstairs to the hotel dining room. You briefly debate the merits of the Taiwanese breakfast versus the American breakfast before a hankering need of some bacon and eggs begins to eat away at your stomach lining.
While you eat, you flip through two of the latest magazines on the restaurant industry, and spot a feature article about your company's primary competitor and their quest to snap up market share in East Asia. It's like China's the Iron Throne of Westeros or something: Everyone wants to be king of fried food in this part of the world.
At 9:00AM, Danny Chang arrives at your hotel to give you a ride to the client's office in Songshan District. Danny is an account manager; you've known him for three years and chat with him via Skype on a regular basis.
It takes about thirty minutes for Danny to get you to his workplace. He leads you to a large and well-lit conference room, where you greet the people who will be listening to your presentation and exchange business cards with all of them. You've worked with these folks for the last three years. You like them and they like you. They're anxious to hear what you have to say, so you set up your laptop and the presentation begins.
You give your presentation in English, a language that everyone in your audience understands well. Even though you're conversant in Chinese, you want to ensure that no miscommunication occurs when talking about your company's new product. The presentation lasts approximately an hour and a half. At the end, you ask for questions and feedback from your audience.
Your customers seem very excited about the new fryer, especially as it promises to be a less disaster-prone machine than the current fryer line. They throw questions at you about the new fryer's production schedule and unit pricing. You've heard many of these questions from your other East Asian clients, so you have no trouble answering them. You promise to email out a document covering the highlights of your presentation later this evening.
The meeting switches gears. You go over sales data for the last five years with the group. You listen to a complaint about the current line of fryers: The folks who work in Taiwan's fast-food restaurants hate the beeping noise that signals a fryer cycle is complete, particularly after one irate—and surely competent—worker lost his balance while attempting to punch the fryer. He slipped and shoved his hand in to the scalding oil
You politely dismiss the Chicken Fingers lawsuit and mention a kit in the works at your company's engineering department that uses blinking lights instead of loud, obnoxious beeps to signal the end of a fryer cycle. Your customers seem to like the idea of the kit; you let them know that the kit is due to be complete next month, and you'll keep them updated on it when it becomes available.
You're pretty sure it's 2:00PM by now, and you're starving. You've burned through the breakfast you ate at your hotel, so your customers take you out for Mongolian barbecue. The food is absolutely amazing, but you know your clothes are going to reek until you can get them dry-cleaned back in the States. Oh, well: At least you aren't eating sea urchin in Shanghai. That stuff was awful.
After lunch, you bid farewell to your clients and head back to your hotel. You feel like you've just survived an Afternoon Redness in the East; given that you have to sit on an airplane for sixteen hours to get back to the West Coast tomorrow, you decide it's time for a little R&R. The concierge at your hotel recommends you visit a famous spa up in the mountains near Taipei.
You catch a cab and arrive at the spa at around 5:00PM. The day has turned cloudy and rainy; you can barely see anything other than the great big resort looming out of the mist. You spend the next couple of hours soaking in a tub fed by hot springs. Now you feel ready to face down that plane ride tomorrow.
You catch a cab back to your hotel in downtown Taipei, order room service, and check your email. You've been checking your messages sporadically throughout the day, but nothing pressing has shown up. This time, Ralph's notes on the Argentine proposal have arrived, so you insert his information into your draft as you gobble down your dinner. By 10:00PM, you've sent the proposal on its way and fielded about a dozen other emails at the same time.
You're exhausted. Since you took this job as an international sales representative three years ago, you've been to fifty different countries. You've met hundreds of people, some of whom have gone from just business acquaintances to friends. You've eaten bizarre foods, gotten smashed in foreign bars, and bought Faux-lexes for every person in your immediate family. You love your job…but, sometimes, you'd like to have to travel just a little less.
Of course, what would you do if you left international sales? You briefly imagine taking all of the money you've saved up and going to law school…or maybe you could just get a less demanding gig in domestic sales. You hear the pay is pretty good over there, too.
You settle down in bed and go to sleep. In the morning, you'll put in about four hours of work before smooshing two suitcases' worth of stuff into a single suitcase and a carry-on bag. You'll head to the airport and then you'll go home. In a couple of days, it will be time for you to plan your next international journey…this time, to five countries in Europe. Just thinking about the trip makes you even more tired than you already are, but hey, maybe you'll dream about bouillabaisse and a good soufflé.