I stifle the impulse to reply with a scathing tone and a blighting glance. "Yes, I went to school to learn this job," I respond mildly. "For four months."

"Oh, I bet I could do this. I wouldn't need to go to school for it. It looks easy," she repeats. I refrain from rolling my eyes and go back to my desk.

Actually, it's not precisely hard to do it. It's simply hard to do it well. As in any service profession one juggles customer service, product education, and sales psychology. Throw in efficient time management, an encyclopedic knowledge of geography, a good memory for details, and a willingness to improvise and you, too, can be a good travel agent.

You'll need to remember what time zone any given city is in, which ones observe daylight savings, and what side of the International Date Line a city is on before you pick up the phone to call a hotel out of state. You can't waste time looking up airport codes, so you'll have to memorize hundreds of them. Make up mnemonics for the ones that don't correlate to the city name: BDL is Boring and Dull (sorry, Hartford), GRU is a gruesomely long flight to Sao Paulo, SDF is so damn far to go just to get to Louisville. Remember when booking hotels that the airport code is normally used as a reference point, but some cities have their own city code left from the days when they used to have city airports, and thus you might find certain hotels listed only that way.

Memorize hotel codes, car rental codes, airline codes, and cruise line codes, not leaving out status codes, meal codes, equipment codes, and special request codes (there are four different wheelchair request codes alone denoting severity of disability - can walk to seat, needs curbside greeting, etc.). You'll be spelling out the six letter record locators associated with each passenger name record every time you talk to the airlines, so you might as well commit alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxtrot, golf, h ... oh, god, I've forgotten h again ... india, juliet, kilo, lima, mike, november, oscar, papa, quebec, romeo, sierra, tango, uniform, victor, whiskey, xray, yankee and zulu to memory, too. If you're like me you'll substitute men's names when you can't remember the military version at which point some kind soul will helpfully remind you it's h for hotel.

You'll need to qualify every vacation query so you are sure of what the client wants before you run hither and yon tracking down vague requests for destinations. Find out if they have been to the requested destination before, if they need to book air or if they'll be using frequent flier miles, what they like to do on vacation, and how much money they want to spend. If they don't know, ask them if $3000 is too much. You'll find they really do have a budget. Got all that? Great. Here's how your day will go:

9:00 Start in on the five voicemail messages and five to ten email messages awaiting you.

9:01 Take phone request for fare quote. Shop it, quote it, then book it or get them off the line.

9:05 Fax hotel in St. Paul de Vence to check availability for party of 11. Fax hotel in Denver to request down pillows for client arriving tomorrow. Fax hotel in Brazil asking concierge to arrange car and driver for client. In between, take several requests for fare quotes.

9:47 Client sits down at your desk and asks for brochures on Turkey, the Dominican Republic, and Hawaii. You know this person is either doing a book report or is seriously confused about where they want to go. Qualify them. Discover they hate bugs, foreigners, and long flights. Convince them to go to Hawaii, make booking, send off with brochure.

10:09 Answer three voicemails and two emails that came in while your client was here. Go through queue, issue tickets with deadline of today, review schedule changes and print new itineraries for anyone whose flight numbers have changed. Begin accumulating enormous pile of tickets which will need to be put together before the end of the day or the client arrives, whichever comes first.

10:28 Field phone calls from frantic clients stuck at unnamed gigantic midwestern airport with ridiculous delays. Cancel old flights, print tickets for refunds, issue new tickets, give new ticket numbers to gate agents who claim they can't find your clients' new ticket numbers, assure clients they really do have a seat on the noon flight.

10:38 Remember you bought coffee this morning. Yuck, it's cold. Drink it while getting quote on Alaska cruise for honeymoon couple.

10:42 Compose letter requesting refund for no-show charge on cancelled hotel booking. Research and photocopy microfiche evidence that cancellation was made on time. Fax to clowns at hotel who plan to ignore it; know that you will have to pursue this later. Simultaneously handle multiple phone calls requesting flight times, cost, date of travel, and other important information clients need. Remind them it was in all the emails you sent them at the time of booking. Keep bitter tone out of voice.

11:00 Client at desk weeping, father died this morning, must have bereavement fare. Handle with tact and speed.

11:15 Phone visa service and push to find out where your client's Brazilian visa is. They leave tomorrow and must have it to travel. Get hung up on by visa service who do not know how to use their phone system. Call back and get placed on hold with world's most annoying hold music. Curse vainly.

11:21 Client sits down and books a trip to Mexico with you. No fuss, no muss. Wish they were all like this.

11:40 Call everyone back who left voicemail while you were screaming at visa service and selling the package to Puerto Vallarta.

12:00 Advise drop-in client where he can get some foreign currency exchanged. Explain to caller that although they plan to stay on their cruise ship the entire cruise they still need proof of citizenship as they will be sailing in international waters. Call and remind three people that final payment is due today on their vacation packages.

12:15-1:00 Lunch.

You get the picture. No task is ever completed without interruptions. You don't get to stare at the computer while waiting for a fare quote, either. You could be putting together tickets, filling out refund forms, or filing old papers while you wait. But there are upsides. You're never bored. You're never done learning. Something weird always throws your schedule out of whack, as when the President of Syria dies and the entire country is sent into enforced mourning for 40 days just as you need to get a quick answer on a tour package you've requested. It's a fascinating job, and the people make it all worthwhile. This is because you will never, ever get used to the queer ideas people have about geography and travel.

Does it look easy? It's much harder than you'd think to do it well. But man, is it fun.

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