prolonged stupidity

This morning a wake up call rudely awoke my sleep at 3:45am. Last night I stayed in the Marriott near the airport because I wanted to maximize on my sleep by minimizing driving time. After packing up my things, folding my laundry, and reorganizing bags (I was too exhausted to do this last night) I headed to the airport with very little time to spare.

I know that I can push the limits on how much time I allow prior to departure because I was flying United and have highest status with them, so I skip all of the lines. Once I got there, I stepped up to the front of the Red Carpet line, hand the guy my ID and he tells me he can’t find my reservation.

Now let me say, I never book my own business travel, but I didn’t decide to go to Iowa this week until after 5pm on Friday, so I took care of everything by myself.

He continues to look up my information and he tells me that my flight is booked for next Monday, not this Monday, and that I need to call to see if I can get it changed because all flights this morning are completely full. Also, he mentions that I need to step out of line because he has to check in the rest of the passengers.

Fine, I get out of line and start asking around for the payphones (yes, I lost my phone this weekend… it’s part of the sleeping in the car story). Turns out payphones are now a part of history and no longer exist in the Bradley International Airport. So I get back in line to the ticket counter so that I can ask if I can use his phone.

Now at this point, my stupidity just completely overwhelmed me. Between the phone fiasco and this ticket mistake, plus exhaustion, I have tears welling up in my eyes. I was struggling to handle my life, and the guy was clearly feeling awkward about it

Magically, seats appeared on both of the flights that I wanted to get on; I made it through security and to the gate just as they were making a final boarding call.

The moral of the story is patience and tears basically fix everything. However, at this point, I’m not sure if he changed my reservation or what he did or how I’m going to get back to Hartford. Also, I have no idea if I have hotel reservations or if I did the same idiotic thing for that too. It’s not all fixed, but baby steps in the right direction.