Due to my carefree attitude on preparation of business
travel, I have suffered quite much stress while on the road. After all the
experiences I still have an opinion that is clearly better not to worry every
time before the business trip and save your thoughts to core business.
Unfortunately it seems that I have unintentionally copied
the same attitude also to travelling in pleasure. This has given some hard time
to my family, as well. Let me give you one example.
Couple of years ago we spent a relaxing family vacation in La Mange at
the Costa Blanca, Spain. After enjoying two weeks of sunny weather, sweaty
jogging, sound of waves, relaxing books, cool pool, warm evenings, tasty
dinners and ice creams, we were ready to return back to home. Wake up call
three at o’clock at night, quick breakfast, packing suitcases to our rental car
and we were ready to go. It was dark outside. We were running on schedule,
flight was departing around 7 o’clock from Alicante to Tampere.
Soon after hitting the road, the rental car gave an unfamiliar sound signal. We were running out of fuel very soon. We had bypassed the previous service station some kilometers ago. I started to look at the next fuel station with my mobile phone. Nothing at the proximity. The computer was showing range of 20 kilometers. It was still dark and no other cars or people on the road. We bypassed one village at a time, but none of those had a gasoline station. Everyone in the car had some stress already. If we would not find a fuel station in couple of kilometres, we would lose our flight. The computer was showing range of 10 kilometers when I remembered that the next village was the one where me and my wife spent our vacation two decades ago and I thought there must be a gasoline station that is open all night. My navigator indicated two gasoline stations at the village. We found out that the first one was not operational anymore. Tension was growing all the time. We had one more chance. The gasoline station had lights on, but no self-service with credit cards. Is there any service person inside? Yes, what a relief. We filled the tank and drove happily to the airport. Finally everything went well and there are only happy memories left about the vacation.
Soon after hitting the road, the rental car gave an unfamiliar sound signal. We were running out of fuel very soon. We had bypassed the previous service station some kilometers ago. I started to look at the next fuel station with my mobile phone. Nothing at the proximity. The computer was showing range of 20 kilometers. It was still dark and no other cars or people on the road. We bypassed one village at a time, but none of those had a gasoline station. Everyone in the car had some stress already. If we would not find a fuel station in couple of kilometres, we would lose our flight. The computer was showing range of 10 kilometers when I remembered that the next village was the one where me and my wife spent our vacation two decades ago and I thought there must be a gasoline station that is open all night. My navigator indicated two gasoline stations at the village. We found out that the first one was not operational anymore. Tension was growing all the time. We had one more chance. The gasoline station had lights on, but no self-service with credit cards. Is there any service person inside? Yes, what a relief. We filled the tank and drove happily to the airport. Finally everything went well and there are only happy memories left about the vacation.
Lessons learnt:
The business processes does not always fit for private life.
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