Pros on the Road: Sales manager aims to nix travel troubles

— -- Sue Reiss loves her job.

She is national sales manager for Impact Recovery Systems Inc., a company that makes traffic-control devices — such as pedestrian signs — equipped with a mechanism that allows them to rebound immediately if they are struck by a car. Reiss supervises employees and calls on transportation and planning departments across the country.

"I love the people I work with,'' says Reiss. "I love the industry that I'm in.''

But the trips that will keep her on the road 160 days this year? Not so much.

"The downside of my job is the travel,'' she says. "I'm kind of a homebody and I enjoy being at home.''

Of course, being a frequent traveler with top-tier status on Delta has its perks.

"My airline status actually makes the travel as painless as it can be,'' she says. "It's much less painful than (for) anyone else who may just travel infrequently. I'm loaded first. I know there's always room for my bag. I'm normally upgraded. I'm thanked regularly.''

Still, "obvously 9/11 made everything much more difficult,'' she says. "The security lines tend to be longer. The security is much more stringent. I have a knee replacement so I have to be scanned or patted down every time, so that's pretty unpleasant.''

To cope, she's assembled a series of on-the-road rituals that help her stay healthy, calm and connected to home.

First, it's nice to have a great suitcase. Reiss recently found what she calls the "perfect'' bag that holds a few days' worth of clothes and also has a compartment for her laptop, cutting out the need for a briefcase. "It makes my life so much less difficult,'' she says. "I can carry my purse and I have everything else in my bag.''

Equally important is what goes in the bag. There's a pair of slacks or a skirt with lightweight, wrinkle-resistant tops that she can mix and match. And she doesn't leave home without her vitamins. But rather than clutter her luggage with bottles, she counts out how many vitamins she'll need before the trip and packs them in 2-inch Ziploc bags. "They don't take up a lot of space,'' she says.

Once at the airport, she keeps her luggage with her.

"Typically I don't check my bag, because it costs me so much time on the other end,'' she says. "I can wait up to half an hour, going and coming. That doesn't seem like a lot, but cumulatively it amounts to quite a lot of time. The other thing is, if have a flight delay or cancellation, I always have my bag with me. It's happened before where I've gotten to a city and my bag was on the plane and I wasn't, so it's kind of an insurance policy.''

She also keeps her ID and valuables separate. A crisis that occurred during a business trip to Chicago roughly a decade ago led to that critical change in the way she traveled.

"I used to carry a shoulder bag and everything related to me was in a wallet in that bag,'' she says. "All my credit cards. My Social Security card. My checkbook, all my cash, all my ID.''

She was walking back to her car from dinner when she passed a group and got bumped. In that instant, her wallet was stolen.