A reader writes:
I have a severe fear of flying that I’ve been working on with my therapist for a few years now. I was a frequent but nervous flier prior to the pandemic, and my fear has gotten exceptionally worse since. It’s at the point where I physically manifest my anxiety days and weeks in advance of and after a flight (think breaking out in hives just by booking the flight or an IBS attack that lasts for days after flying).
I recently ended up in a role that has me flying at least once a month if not more. I take responsibility for accepting the offer, but it felt like a bait and switch: I had been up-front about not wanting to travel, the recruiter had assured me throughout the process that travel would be once a quarter or less, and it was only in casual conversation after the final round interview with my now-boss that anyone indicated otherwise (and when I pressed my boss to clarify expectations, they went vague and said that some months I wouldn’t need to travel and others would be dependent on the work). The recruiter clarified that the expectation would be once a month after making the offer and giving me 24 hours to accept or decline. Everyone around me said to take the offer and to negotiate travel after I’d been there for a six months to a year.
I’ve been in the role now for about four months and I have work trips lined up every month for the rest of the year. I’ve had a work trip every month so far, and the thought of purchasing another plane ticket has me in hives. That plus some other issues (manager has rolled their eyes at me multiple times since starting and a core job responsibility has been postponed to 2027) has me heading for the hills. I’ve restarted my job search and have chalked this up to not being a good fit. I plan to take the lessons learned from this time and apply them to my next role.
My sister thinks I’m jumping ship too soon and that I should talk to my boss and see if I could scale back to once a quarter starting now. I don’t think that will ever be a possibility because everyone else on my team travels multiple weeks per month and in comparison, I’m barely at HQ already. She insists that this could rise to the level of a formal accommodation, but I think HR would see the travel as essential to the role. Moreover, I took the job! It’s not like I can feign ignorance about the requirement. HQ is not in a major city, so train travel would be almost 20 hours and driving would be eight, which is long enough that I would not want to do it monthly.
Should I try to talk this out or just plan my exit?
If the travel were the only issue, I’d say you should absolutely talk to your boss about it. You could point out that you were assured throughout the interview process that the travel would be a maximum of quarterly, and ask if there was any realistic way to get back to that. You wouldn’t necessarily get the change you wanted, but it would be worth having the conversation and finding out for sure before leaving over it.
But with the other issues, particularly your boss rolling their eyes at you multiple times? (Of course, be sure that’s what it was. Facial expressions are sometimes misinterpreted, but if you’re feeling contempt/rudeness/negativity from them more broadly, that’s significant.) With a boss who is treating you poorly and a major thing you expected to be doing in the job now two years off and they misled you on the travel … yeah, planning an exit makes sense.
Also, what was up with everyone around you telling you to take the offer and negotiate the travel after you’ve been there six months to a year? That was bad advice! If you knew the travel was going to be a deal-breaker for you, or even just really miserable and not something you would have signed up for if it had been disclosed from the start, it makes no sense to take the job and hope you can change something fundamental about it later on — to say nothing of signing yourself up for six months to a year of panic, hives, and IBS attacks meanwhile. If you were going to try to negotiate it at some point, the best time to do that was as you were negotiating the offer itself.
As for right now, though, your sister is right if we were looking at the travel in a vacuum: before leaving over it, you should find out if it can change. But with everything else you’ve described about the job, put your energy into just getting out.
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