Herman School of Business
Sometimes ya just gotta laugh...
I was meeting a guy in Dallas for an early morning meeting so I took the 5:50AM flight on Delta from Baltimore connecting in Atlanta. Once in Atlanta I slipped off the plane and grabbed some kind of breakfast food and then walked back on the plane with the flight attendants who flew down from Baltimore with me. After gobbling down whatever it was I bought I leaned over in my seat and fell asleep.
When I woke up we were landing in El Paso or Houston or somewhere but it wasn’t Dallas. I asked the flight attendant what time we got to Dallas and she said after we finish the next hop we head to Dallas which put us in there about three more hours from right then. What? No way. I got the early flight because it said it got to Dallas long before that. Trouble was…I got back on the same plane I took to Atlanta and I was supposed to change planes for a quick hop over to Dallas. Five hours later than expected I finally got to Dallas…sometimes ya just gotta laugh.
We flew half way across the country and then drove 90 miles to a factory to meet with the owner. He sent a driver in a Chevy to pick us up and I threw my bag in the trunk and we headed off to the meeting. Literally ten minutes into the session the owner realized we were not there to write a check and bail him out of his difficulties so he threw us out of his office. Although the owner was boiling mad we had to remind him that he had a driver pick us up and we needed a ride back to that airport ninety miles away. The Chevy pulled up out front and we hopped in and drove back. At the airport I had the driver open the trunk to get my bag…oops…different Chevy…I had to call the owner to send another car, the one with my bag, on another 180 mile round trip because I needed papers from my bag to testify in a court hearing the next day…I could almost see the steam coming from the guys ears ninety miles away…sometimes ya just gotta laugh.
The plane going into Jackson, Mississippi was running late. Way late. Like over an hour late and the airport normally closed at midnight, but it was now almost 1:00AM. And after being on that plane more hours than I could count I needed to hit the rest room because my kidneys were floating. I passed the Avis counter and saw the attendant still there so I ducked into the men’s room to take care of my business. In that short amount of time while I was taking care of that necessity…everyone in the airport went home. When I stepped out of the men’s room no one was there. Anywhere. And when I walked outside to look for a taxi the door locked behind me. I was locked out of the now closed airport with no car, no taxis and my hotel about fifteen miles away. I called the Holiday Inn and had to offer the desk guy fifty bucks to come rescue me. Although it didn’t seem so funny at the time it was just another example of “sometimes ya just gotta laugh.”
- Posted: 29 February 2008
- Comments: 1
- Category: Running a business
I’m reading The Innkeeprs Tales and between this story and the ones in the book, I don’t see how you did all that without cell phones and email capable pda’s. All I can say is OLD SCHOOL.
HERMAN SAYS: Yes, Richard, there were actually pay phones scattered about and to show you the value of technolgy improvements...my telephone bills in the late eighties were over ten thousand dollars per year....and today I could do more, faster, and for about one-fourth of the cost.Written by Richard on 29 February 2008