That was on my first business trip to San Francisco bay area
with the new company. The daily schedule was busy and there was no time for
tourist excitement. However, there was time to enjoy nice dinners in a good
company, as well as early morning running sessions at the hotel gym.
Once the meetings were over and I was in a hurry to catch the flight
from SFO back to home. I said goodbye to my colleagues, packed my stuff and hurried to the local Bart metro station. I had relaxing feeling as I was happily on
a trip back to home.
My phone rang while I was on my way to the airport. It was
a colleague of mine asking a straight question; “Is your bag light?” The question hit me in a second. I
left my laptop on a table at the meeting room. For a second I thought about my options.
There was no way to get my laptop if I wanted to catch the flight. How could I
work the next week without laptop? Fedex delivery would be too slow in this case. My
colleagues were going to stay another week in California. No good options were
left, until I remembered that one of our company executives was flying back to
Finland one day later. That is my opportunity, I though.
I called to the executive. Hello, this is Mr SneakerTraveller. I am on my
way back to home and I want you to carry my laptop while you fly back to home
tomorrow. I thought it is lighter to travel without my laptop, so I left it for you to bring it back to Tampere. Okay, it did not go exactly like that, but this was
how I felt about it.
That was a relaxing weekend at home. For a reason or
another, I did not work at all that weekend. The next Monday I was a humble
when I met the executive at the office. At the same time I was happy to see my laptop
again. Since then, I have heard a couple of times my colleagues reminding about the
light bag.
Lessons learnt:
Have courage to admit your mistake, carry on the
consequences and go on living full speed.