I went to check my messages, at the end of a long day, and for a second I got chills…
A mistake was done, and it was my fault…
It was already midnight and there was nothing to be done for the time being.
The message I got was from our secretary saying she was going to send our flight and hotel bookings tomorrow for our next business trip.
The issue was that I had already booked the hotels and there was no cancellation refund. That would mean a roughly 2000€ mistake. Money out the window.
Imagine a fire pit, and you throw a bunch of bills, totalling 2000 Euros, into that fire.
It’s said that Pablo Escobar burned 2 Million dollars in a fire pit, to stay warm.
Well, I don’t have that kind of money.
So any wasted money really hurts.
So I messaged her saying I already had booked rooms for everybody, but it was already midnight, I wouldn’t get a response until the next morning. Since I couldn’t do anything about it, I didn’t dwell on it and went back to sleep.
The next morning she gets back to me saying she didn’t have Free Cancelation on her booking but she would find a way to fix it.
I don’t know what she did, but she worked her magic and an hour later she had fixed it and gotten the money back on one of the reservations.
YEEEESSS, what a relief. I texted her saying “Next time, I’ll let you do your job XD”
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Here is some simple takeaways from this interaction:
#1) Communication friction occurs in any organisation, and it costs a lot of money. In this case, my mistake was that I didn’t properly read an email.
#2) If there’s nothing else you can do that day, don’t dwell on the problem, try to get a good night sleep so you can have a fresh mind the next day.
What mistakes have you done or seen done because of a communication problem?