The major drawback to taking full responsibility for your own actions and decisions as that there’s nobody to blame when you frick things up.
Our recent trip to Cork was just a teeny bit stressful, and it was nobody’s fault but our own.
It all started with being a little bit too optimistic about how much time we could fanny about at home before leaving for Bristol airport.
Our trusty assistant, Jenni, had carefully allowed travel time in our diaries, but not being ones to obey instructions (even our own) we thought we could squeeze a few extra minutes out of the schedule, and we left with just enough time to throw our car at the car park and dash onto the plane…
…except Crapollo, the God of Air Travel, had different ideas for us.
Crapollo, in his infinite wisdom, saw us being idiots and decided to teach us a lesson.
He knew we had pre-booked the multi-story car park at the airport, and rather than allowing us to glide safely into a parking space, he filled it to the brim with cars (probably temporarily borrowed from the off site parking zones) and maddeningly left just one space to find over five floors.
Blood pressure rising, Kev and I scoured the rows of parked cars looking for that single space.
(By the way - if you own a Fiat 500 or a Smart Car for the love of all that is cocking holy will you please park with the nose of your car level with the front of the parking space because it makes people like me use even more terrible language than usual.)
Unable to find the single space, we abandoned our car as safely as we could at the end of a row and decided to fight it out when we got home.
We grabbed our bags and legged it into the terminal, knowing we had just minutes left to check our bags in.
Aer Lingus desk…Aer Lingus desk…Where the f8ck is the Aer Lingus desk?
We asked a cleaner
“I think it’s down that way”, she said, pointing to where we had just sprinted from.
We sprinted back. It wasn’t there.
Precious seconds were ticking by.
We asked a woman at the information desk who pointed us back up to where the cleaner was standing, “It’s just up there between the Tui and Jet 2 desks…”
Kill. Me. Now.
We sprinted back.
And there it was, a solitary desk squeezed in between banks of Tui and Jet 2 desks like Platform 9 ¾.
Hallelujah!
We raced up to the desk, adrenaline fuelled and excited to have finally reached our destination only to be met by a sallow-skinned man shaking his head.
“This desk is closed!” he blurted.
WWWWWHHHHHHAAAAAATTTTTT?
“The desk closed three minutes ago. There is nothing I can do” he full-stopped.
He looked at us like he must look at all people who are too stupid to follow airport guidelines to arrive at the airport in plenty of time to catch their flight - with more contempt than compassion.
I imagine many of the people he deals with rant and rave at him.
But, being a woman who takes full responsibility for her own actions, I simply dropped my head and swore profusely at myself.
When he realised I wasn’t going to attack him, he managed to squeeze out a small “I’m sorry”.
I looked at Kev, who was on the same page as me - wanting to tear shit up but knowing we only had ourselves to blame.
Our tale of woe doesn’t end there, and I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow - but the coaching lesson today is taking full responsibility for yourself doesn’t always feel easy.
It’s much more comforting to look for other people and circumstances to blame, but ultimately that causes you to feel like a victim.
We knew we needed to take a long, hard look at the way we were operating and change what we do in future.
We will now be allowing extra buffer time when travelling by air to allow for Crapollo’s frickwittery.
Kev and I hate hanging around and wasting time, so we’ll plan to have something like a strategy meeting or catch up on emails during the time we’ll have spare in the airports, because you can bet your bottom dollar we’ll never have any issues like 99.9%-full car parks or Harry Potter check in desks when we allow plenty of time.
The next time you find yourself in a situation like that (and we all do from time to time) don’t waste time looking who you can blame, just take it on the chin and vow to do it better next time.