A few years ago I was in Las Vegas on my way home from teaching a seminar. When I got to the airport, I found out that my flight had been delayed which caused a bunch of us to miss our connecting flights. Ah well! I tend to be calm about these sorts of things because there really is no use getting mad about it. In fact, I was cracking jokes to the woman in back of me to lighten the mood a bit.
The gentleman in front of me, however, was different. He was so mad that I could almost see steam coming out of his ears. He was yelling and screaming at this poor young girl behind the counter. It wasn't her fault that our flight was delayed, but he didn't seem to care about that. He spent about 10 minutes banging the counter with his hand and yelling at her in loud tones, and then stormed off. As I watched him go, I wondered why on earth would you yell at the person who has the power to get you home?
Since I was next in line, I walked up to her counter and immediately noticed that she was doing everything in her power to stop herself from crying in front of me. She was so distraught that her hands were shaking! My heart melted. So I put my bags down and looked her right in the eyes. I then told her to take as much time as she needed to get herself together because I was sure her supervisor wasn't going to let her go on a break. I then started to gently talk to her while she wiped her eyes and took a few deep breaths.
We chatted about the man and his situation for a few minutes until she had calmed down. I got her to laugh about it and she was able to move forward. She then put me on a flight and I headed towards my gate. As I walked towards security, I looked down at the ticket and was stunned when I saw that she had given me a seat in first class! Plus there was a certificate that bought me dinner in the airport.
As I've said many times... what you put out in this world, you'll get back. Treat people like you yourself would like to be treated. That's the true key to it all.
My mantra? Always leave people better than you found them.
It brought to mind two incidents of mine. First the bad one. After visiting a friend the week before my girlfriend insisted that we get a hotel "near" O'Hare Airport. The hotel was difficult to find, far from the airport, dirty and old, and generally a mistake. She was slow to get going in the morning, so by the time we got to the airport, we missed the flight. We got rescheduled for a later flight and waited. Being unable to get up and walk around easily, I relied on her to check on the flight.
Time for the flight came and went. A plane had lost its front landing gear upon landing and the airport was in disarray. Finally, I asked my girlfriend one more time to check on the flight and she was told that it was boarding on the other side of the airport! I started yelling. Just then, the friend we had visited came along with his son after dropping off someone at the airport. He saw me yelling. I stopped. I was so embarrassed and didn't know how to tell him why I was so angry. An old lady airport employee pushed me in a wheelchair--very fast--to our gate what seemed like a half-mile away. It was another half hour before our flight finally took off.
Another friend and I were in Kennedy international checking our bags for our flight to London when a man was yelling at a Moroccan Airline employee that he had to check his bags because his plane was leaving. I saw his concern and told him that he could cut line in front of us because we were still some hours from our flight.
A week later, while walking on the street in Cairo, my friend and I came upon the man and his mother. He told us he was a medical doctor from Virginia visiting his family over the Christmas holiday. Thanked us for our kindness, but didn't invite us into his family's home. Something that many other strangers I met on route often did.
Ron