My 5 AM flight plan got rewritten by a coffee spill in Nashville

I was sitting at the gate in Nashville last month, 50 minutes before boarding, and I had my whole day mapped out. Land in Chicago by 8, meeting at 10, back home by 6. Then my elbow caught my venti cup and it went straight into my open laptop. Not the keyboard, not the screen, but the charging port. Fried it. Phone had 20% battery and the meeting notes were on that laptop. So I sat there for 10 minutes just staring at the Departures board, realizing I had to rebuild my plan on the fly. I used my phone to email the client that I'd be on a later flight, called my wife to grab my backup charger from the car, and wrote out the key talking points on a napkin. Landed at noon, did the meeting from my phone at a Starbucks near the office, and it actually went fine. The client even said my napkin notes were 'refreshingly direct.' Has anyone else had a small disaster completely reset their day plan and how did you adapt without losing your head?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowan_anderson8d ago

Damn, a coffee fried your charging port? That's brutal. I've had gear die on me in way dumber ways, but never at the exact moment I needed it most. You sat there for ten minutes staring at the board, that's the real skill. Most people would've been screaming or crying right there at the gate. Writing notes on a napkin is old school but it works, clients love that raw stuff. Good on you for not letting it snowball into a full panic.

danieljenkins6d ago

Was the panic really worse than the dead phone, @rowan_anderson, or did the napkin just look good for the client?