Friday Forward - Bad Day (#503)

Sometimes the universe just has it out for you, and you don’t get to negotiate with it

As a kid, one of my favorite books was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, where a boy experiences a day where literally everything goes wrong. This past week, I was Alexander.

It started Tuesday evening. I was traveling to speak the next morning at a leadership offsite for a new client. I was heading to the airport plenty early for my 7:15pm flight. The weather was clear, the airline app showed my inbound flight was on time, and everything seemed in order.

How foolish I was.

Ten minutes before I arrived, I got that dreaded notification: my flight was delayed two hours due to mechanical issues. Had I received that text twenty minutes earlier, I would have stayed home longer with my family. Annoying, but hardly a disaster.

But at the airport, the real saga began.

Over the next hour, I received ten different delay updates. Eventually, a new aircraft for my flight was assigned, but that replacement was delayed by weather and runway traffic in New York. By the time we boarded, it was past 11pm, and I’d already resigned myself to very little sleep.

But then that second plane had mechanical issues too, as my phone notification informed me before the crew even announced it. We deplaned, moved to a third aircraft, waited again while luggage and catering were transferred, and boarded well after midnight.

When we pulled out to the runway, I thought, “Well, at least I’m getting out.” Then came the announcement: the flight crew had timed out due to fatigue, so we weren’t going anywhere. We deplaned around 1am.

I emailed the client letting them know I’d likely need to present virtually. I started driving home, calling my wife to avoid startling her. But my calls went straight to voicemail multiple times due to a connection issue, even though we had tested our do not disturb mode settings for this exact scenario days before.

As I was wondering whether to use my hotel voucher from the airline, yet another update came through: my flight was rescheduled for 7:30am. I made a U-turn, checked into the airport hotel (with an unexpected $60 valet fee), and caught maybe four hours of sleep.

The next morning didn’t start much better. My boarding pass wouldn’t scan at security because it was issued the previous day. The departure board falsely showed the flight as “departed.” During boarding, the same outdated boarding passes caused a very predictable, preventable, 15-minute delay.

Once airborne, I hoped to catch up on email, but the Wi-Fi was broken. Then, when I landed, my phone GPS believed I was somewhere in rural Virginia, which meant Uber was quoting $580 fares to get me 15 minutes down the road.

I eventually made it to the hotel and went immediately to the offsite meeting room. But as I set up my laptop for the presentation, the HDMI connection—which had just worked for someone else—suddenly wouldn’t connect. I restarted my machine, which triggered, you guessed it, a ten-minute Windows update.

At that point, I just had to laugh.

A borrowed laptop and a backup USB drive finally saved the day. But after all that, the session itself was energizing and productive. It may have even been better because of what it took to get there, and the adrenaline surely helped.

Had all this happened to me ten years ago, I might have had a panic attack, or at least a meltdown. Instead, I tried to practice what I’ve been preaching for years:

• Focus on what you can control.

• Let go of the rest.

• Keep your sense of humor.

Was I exhausted, frustrated, and annoyed? Absolutely. But it wasn’t a tragedy. Other people received far worse news that same day, news that was life-changing, not life-inconveniencing.

Sometimes the universe just has it out for you, and you don’t get to negotiate with it. All you can do is keep perspective, take things in stride, and get through it without losing your head or your sense of humor.

I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but I made it through. As Alexander said at the end of his own horrible day: “My mom says some days are like that.”

Quote of The Week

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

Have a great weekend!

-Bob
robertglazer.com

PS: Preorder The Compass Within in hardcover to get my core values course for free.