The unpaid hours in this trade are supposed to come before the yes. I think the worst ones come after it.

Speculative work is hours spent before a yes, in the hope of getting one. It is the one kind of unpaid work the trade has actually built answers to: a fee, a qualifying call, a limit on how many of those you take in a year.

Disruption is the reverse shape, and I am not sure the trade has a name for it.

The yes already happened. The trip is booked, the file is closed in everybody's head. Then two people in the party fall ill two days out, and the stay is inside the non-refundable window.

From there, I think doing the job properly can be the thing that removes the pay for it.

One advisor had an easy version available to him. The client takes the credit note, the money stays with the supplier, and nothing has to be unwound.

He kept that as the last option rather than the first. He sent the medical documents, chased it, and got the whole amount waived. The client got the money back. What was attached to the booking is between him, his supplier and his host. He said nothing survived.

I am not turning one person's booking into a rule about commission. His supplier, his host, his file.

Two outcomes, and in his file they did not simply pay different amounts, they pointed in opposite directions. I think that shape turns up in more files than his. That is my read, not something I can show you.

I do not think I am inventing this. When WestJet said it would protect advisor commission on disrupted bookings, the trade association carried it. Good on them, genuinely. I read an announcement like that as a sign that the default runs the other way.

None of that reaches the client. That is mostly what doing it well looks like.

I think that is also why it leaves nothing behind. The client experiences the absence of a problem.

So it stays a professional instinct rather than anything the money is arranged around, and the better you are at it, the less there is at the end.

What I do think is that the trade files all of it under service, and service is the word this business uses for work it has already decided is free.

When a trip falls apart inside the penalty window, has anyone ever actually paid you for the week that comes after?