The Upside of Terrible Time Management

Tardiness is my Achilles heel. Chronic lateness has caused me no end of anxiety, the loss of a few jobs, and more than one strained relationship. But despite my best efforts it continues to occupy the next-to-top spot on my list of personal flaws.

It’s not that I don’t care about being on time. I hate to be late, but my estimation of the time it takes to complete a task is often wildly optimistic. So even though I should have known better, it seemed entirely reasonable that I could get up at nine o’clock, clean the whole house, hem two pair of jeans, make some freezer-ready meals for my kids, pack my bags, have a shower and walk the dog, and still be ready to leave for the airport by four in the afternoon to catch my flight overseas.

As usually happens when I load too much to do into too little time, the hours sped by. When it got to be nearly three forty-five, logic should have told me to ditch the shower I still hadn’t had, but my horror of being in public with yucky hair trumped rational thought. All the way to the airport I simmered with anxiety. I doubted that my youngest son had ever driven so carefully, but still we made it to the terminal just under the wire—one hour and five minutes before flight time.

The line of passengers checking in was short, although everyone seemed to have time-consuming issues with seat selection or overweight bags. I avoided looking at my watch. Normal people don’t get this, but we tardy ones rationalize that if we don’t look at the time, we might not actually be late. Seriously.

Finally it was my turn. I handed my passport to the woman behind the desk, who typed speedily, frowned deeply and then signaled to a supervisor. They conferred for a moment then he uttered words I never thought I would hear, despite having played fast and loose with check-in times all my traveling life.

“I’m sorry, but you will not be able to board this flight due to your late arrival at check-in.” My knees buckled. He might as well have told me I had 24 hours to live. We had a little back-and-forth, the supervisor and I, with me pointing out that I had actually been standing in line before the 60-minute cut-off. He informed me—officiously, I imagined—that what mattered was the moment I presented myself to a check-in agent.

I pointed out a few other things, such as how it was essential for me to be on this flight, and that this was all ridiculous anyway, because the plane was there, and I could get to it in time. But your bags won’t, he said, and that’s why there are minimum check-in times. I stooped a bit lower and tried to pull some imaginary rank by saying that I traveled this route all the time, with the implication that I was a Very Important Passenger. In that case, you should know better than to arrive late, he said.

Ouch.

I begged. Implored. I detest using emotion to manipulate, but I even turned on a few tears. Nothing doing. Now, I know that getting mad is the last desperate card of self-righteous people and it never, ever, works, but my sickening disappointment left no room for any kind of reasonableness. I tried to intimidate him. I demanded to know his name and position and let him know – without yelling, mind you – how displeased I was with the treatment I was getting. In a very regrettable way, I tried my best to shift the blame to him, but he was immovable; a granite block without a whiff of empathy about him . I had to give it up.

The agent who reissued my ticket couldn’t have been nicer. He saw only my distress, not the uglier flip side. While I waited to find out how much my mistake was going to cost, I cooled off a bit and did some hard thinking. The whole thing had been no one’s fault but my own and I had made things tough for someone who was only doing his job. It didn’t feel very good.

The agent handed me a new ticket, now routed through London instead of Frankfurt. He shook his head when I reached for my credit card. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. That did it. Relief dissolved what was left of my fear and anger and I resolved to track down Granite Man and tell him I was sorry.

I found him at the departure gate of my original flight—ironically, the plane was still there, delayed by forty five minutes—and offered my regrets for having made his job more difficult. He looked unconvinced and only reluctantly accepted my handshake. I slunk away hardly feeling any better.

An hour later, there he was again at the door of the London-bound plane. I figured I’d just pretend to be invisible, but as I tried to slip past him he said something totally unexpected. He asked, kindly, if everything had worked out in the end. And he apologized. For having upset me with bad news. For having appeared to be unfeeling, when in fact he had felt very sorry for me. It was the only way he could make himself do something he hated, he explained. I nearly hugged him. Then he asked to have my boarding pass and told me to wait a moment.

On the way to London, I had lots of time to reflect on human behavior and how, when we lose objectivity, the spillover is sometimes hard to contain. How important it is to be responsible for what we do. How we err when we make assumptions about others and how disarming an apology can be—although to be completely honest, I don’t know how easily these conclusions would have come had I not been spared paying a stiff fee. And thanks to the decency of the person I had affronted, I was enjoying an upgrade to business class.

That might have been the entirely satisfactory end of it all. But as I made my way to my connecting flight at Heathrow airport, I spotted a familiar face in the crowd. It’s a bit disingenuous to think that this improbable stroke of luck might have been a reward for being tardy, or sorry, or both. But still.

“Mom!! “ My eldest son grabbed me in a bone-crushing hug. “I'm about to leave for Amsterdam. What the hell are YOU doing here?”

Well, it’s kind of a long story. But you know how I’m always late...?