The job said 10% travel. I have spent three Mondays this month at the airport

The travel line in my job description said “up to 10%.” During the interview, I asked what that meant. The director said there might be a quarterly client visit and an annual team meeting.

In my first ten weeks, I have taken seven work trips.

The pattern became clear on a Sunday night in an airport parking garage. I was dragging my suitcase toward the elevator when my phone showed a calendar invitation for another site visit the following Monday. I had not even started the trip I was currently taking.

None of the trips is outrageous by itself. Most are two nights. The company pays the flights and hotel. My manager says the visits are temporary because several client launches happened close together. The next launch calendar, however, already extends into spring.

The cost is not just the nights away. Travel swallows the edges of the week. I pack on Sunday, fly Monday morning, spend two days in conference rooms, land Wednesday evening, and use Thursday to answer everything that accumulated while I was gone. By Friday I am doing laundry and trying to remember what I had planned before the trip appeared.

I chose this job partly because the limited travel sounded manageable. I share custody of a dog with my former partner, volunteer at a community theater, and have a life that depends on knowing which city I will be in. Those details are not emergencies, but they are the reason I asked the question before accepting.

When I raised the mismatch, my manager did not deny it. He said everyone was “leaning in” during a busy period and pointed out that travel gives me valuable client exposure. Both things may be true. They do not turn seven trips into 10%.

I asked when the temporary period would end. He said he could not promise a date because client needs change. I asked whether trips could rotate. He said I had built the strongest relationships, which sounded like praise and an assignment at the same time.

I do not want to walk into the next meeting with a calculator and accuse anyone of lying. I also do not want “temporary” to survive indefinitely because I remain capable of managing it.

My plan is to bring the actual travel dates, ask for the expected schedule over the next eight weeks, and propose a cap or rotation. If the role has genuinely changed, I would rather hear that plainly than keep debating the wording of an old job description.

What would a useful correction look like here: fewer trips, more notice, a formal change to the role, or permission to say no after a threshold? At what point does a busy season become the real job?