D has an internship interview next week. On Monday she learned that her company paid flights require her to get up at 3:00 am to travel the 90 minutes to the airport, get through security and get on her flight. She returns back the same day around 9:30 pm and then has to travel back to school.
I realize it is too late to say anything now but should she have mentioned the issue when the travel coordinator sent her the flight info? Or is that amount of inconvenience (and exhaustion) expected?
I applaud the company for saving money!
Are you saying there’s a closer airport? Otherwise, it looks pretty normal to have a one day trip set up for an interview. It makes for early mornings and late nights if you live far from the airport.
My daughter and I are catching an early morning flight, so we will leave the house around 4am. It’s the only flight that gets us to our destination on time without requiring a hotel stay the previous night.
Is the returning flight departure at 9:30 or is its arrival at 9:30? Is she driving?
If she is driving, can they get her on an earlier return flight? There is a legit safety concern w her rising so early to catch the flight then returning VERY late to face a long drive w little sleep.
Tactfully ask the company if an earlier return flight is possible. Cite the safety issue i mentioned. If the company dings her for taking safety seriously, then this is not a place she wants to work. Both my mother and my nephew were in separate serious car accidents because of driver falling asleep at the wheel. In my nephew’s crash, the driver of the other car was killed.
“On Monday she learned that her company paid flights require her to get up at 3:00 am to travel the 90 minutes to the airport, get through security and get on her flight. She returns back the same day around 9:30 pm and then has to travel back to school.”
-What is an issue? This is just one interview. How about 6 in a row at different locations with no time to even dry clean the suit. Had to buy another suit just for these sequence. How about few interviews each is about 6 hours long, having interview with 10+ people and a requirement to be at pre-interview dinner the night beofre and all in totally different places of the country, flying and hoping for no snow storm in the most snowy places? And all of that with the stomach that does not take cafeine.
There are much worse schedules than just having one interview. Get tough! Go with the flow and never complain!
Nice she has an interview and someone else is paying for the travel expenses. Many people would be jealous…
Book a hotel near the airport so she doesn’t have to drive home after the return flight if you’re concerned with driver fatigue, but I wouldn’t say anything to the company. Finding your own solution is part of life.
Also, I don’t know how much lead time you are giving her for security and all that but depending on the airport, sometimes you really don’t need to be there more than an hour before the flight, especially a really early one at a regional airport without any baggage. Print your boarding pass at home and go straight to security. If you know someone who regularly flies or of your airport just ask, “how early do I really need to get there.”
Must be a helluva company or a helluva candidate! I’ve never heard of anyone being flown in for an interview for an internship.
Get a hotel room the night before the flight or on the return. She gets some sleep and she drives back in the morning to return for classes.
I agree with PERplexD. We did the same for my daughter last year.
“D has an internship interview next week. On Monday she learned that her company paid flights require her to get up at 3:00 am to travel the 90 minutes to the airport, get through security and get on her flight. She returns back the same day around 9:30 pm and then has to travel back to school.”
I’ve done this in my work world many times. I don’t see the huge deal. People do in and out trips. I’m doing one next week where I take a 6 am flight (so at the airport at 5 am, so leave house at 4:30, so up at 4) and my flight home arrives at 9:30 pm. Big whoops. Such is life. You can’t expect them to pay for a hotel room.
@MiamiDAP - medical residency interviews?
As I mentioned in my post, this is a rhetorical question. We wouldn’t suggest that she try to change things at this late date but I wondered if it would have been to kosher to tactfully mention the timing issues while she was going over the arrangements with the travel coordinator. The airport is ATL so the commute, parking and security issues are not exaggerated.
We have offered to pay for a hotel for her but at this point she feels she will get a better rest in her own bed.
@Madison85 No, if it was an interview for a medical residency, you’d be changing planes in Chicago so you could bring the boys a stack of deep dish pizzas for lunch. And they’d better be hot.
Lol.
Just hadn’t heard about med school for a while.
When first contacted, if your DD has suggestions, it’s OK to call back and indicate possible better options that she may know. However also know that the employer may have ongoing travel arrangements and have limitations. A cordial line of communication should always be assumed, IMHO. If the company can accommodate, I think they will. Otherwise – like other posters have said – make the best of it. Luckily when I travel, I have an ID that allows me to bypass some of the more bothersome aspects of airport rigmarole. But business travel is too often, a necessary evil.
I probably wouldn’t have complained. The actual flight itself isn’t the problem, but it sounds like your daughter plans to get off the plane at 9:30 PM after being awake for, what, 16-17 hours (?) and then drive to school. How far away is that?? The flight arrangement is inconvenient and exhausting, but if she has to drive several hours to school then that just sounds dangerous to me.
That’s really the main issue here and I think that, unless you had multiple options for flights offered, it might be helpful to work on that side of it. The employer may not have the flexibility to customize the flight arrangements. Not getting a hotel to rest at and staying awake the whole time is more of a personal choice than something that’s actually required by circumstance, right?
"MiamiDAP - medical residency interviews? "
-Yep! Brutal times. But this stage is behind, escaped all that snow by couple of weeks. We hope that all of the trouble and about 25 interviews and $10k in expenses will pay off. But after hearing some horror stories, psyched up for anything…4 more weeks of waiting.
Hearing about one interview and no expenses… what a great opportunity!!! Congrats!
First world problems if you think being interviewed for medical residency is brutal. Why, when I was young, the tribal council would grill us for 8 hours straight while poking us with sticks before we even got a tadpole and half a yam to eat.
You got half a yam? Lucky.