My Colleague famously flew to a meeting in Budapest, and was somewhat surprised on arrival that the pre-arrange transport was not there to collect him. Ah, yes, thats because the taxi is at Bucharest sir. DOH!

In my junior days I arranged for some fairly prestigious clients from the Far East to meet us at Chestfield in Kent. Sorted flights, hotels, trains etc.

They were late. Very late. So I phoned them.

They were in Chesterfield. And suprrising OK about it.

They were in Chesterfield. And suprrising OK about it.

reminds me of a story in the papers here about an Eight Hour Cab Ride

About 10 years ago, I drove from Bolton to somewhere in Birmingham for a rolling road day only to find the place locked as it was the day before.

Not me, but many years ago we had a technician turn up at Berwick Signalbox in East Sussex for the “renewals job”. After much investigating it turned out the tech was supposed to be at Berwick upon Tweed!

A few years ago Xmas was mid week and there were quite a few people on hols. I was walking out Fri night and someone I knew by sight came over to shake hands and say happy Xmas and all that. I asked if they were finishing today and they said yes we all are the place is closing for Xmas

That was close

I was stood behind a guy in the security queue at porton down when he was informed his interview was actually at portsdown west. I guess he didn’t get the job.

Went to a meeting an hour early this week but that was in boardroom, and the boardroom is upstairs

I accidentally booked a hire car for a year rather than a day…they were genuinely surprised when I returned it the next morning.

Woke up after a very successful vodka fuelled night at a girls house 12 miles away from mine. Realising I had to be at work in 2 hours time and was still in my evening attire and stank of vodka I decided to run home (before the days of mobile phones so couldn’t call in sick, plus my boss has seen me out).
Ran non stop home, change, showered and ran down to work to find it closed. Yep it was a bank holiday.
Don’t think I could run 1.2 miles these days!

Just checked my holiday tickets to make sure they are 2016!

I managed to book a hotel for completely the wrong date because the booking system used American dates rather than English ones. Something like 4 march instead of 3 April. (The hotel was in the UK but an American chain).

I turned up for a flight a day early. Got my boarding pass and the luggage got on the plane. Only at the boarding gate did we find out!

Arrived a day late for a ferry back from France once – they took pity and got us on the next crossing for free.
Arrived in London for a meeting a week early – that included a flight from Edinburgh.
And I think I’m actually pretty good at being in right place at the right time, on the whole.

University I work for has 3 scottish campuses- 2 in the mainland, 1 in orkney. Every year without fail at least one student will turn up in Edinburgh for a postgrad and discover they’re going to spend the next year sitting on a rock in the middle of the north sea eating seagulls.

But that all got overshadowed, when we opened the campuses in Dubai and Malaysia… Sorry sir, you are 8,400 miles away from where you need to be and your first class is in 2 hours.

On a similar theme I once turned up for a meeting at the council offices. I was deputising for my manager so wasn’t really clued up as to exactly what it was about. I was just told it was related to our organisation (NHS) possibly becoming involved in supporting or delivering the council staff flu campaign and I was to attend to find out more detail. I also had a new team member just join us so decided to take them with me for some experience.

I wasn’t given a contact name so when we turned up at reception and said we were here for a meeting about vaccinations, the receptionist checked a list and directed me to a room. Got there to find this grand looking oak panelled door and although I was on time, it was closed and I could hear voices. I thought that the meeting must’ve got going a bit early so knocked and got called in. There were about a dozen people around a big oval table with a couple of spaces free opposite each other. From the looks on their faces we didn’t appear expected but I guessed that this was because they were expecting my manager. I introduced us and my colleague and I took our seats opposite each other.

The meeting carried on and although it was a vaccination meeting, it soon became clear that it wasn’t the vaccination meeting we were supposed to attend! It was some public health England meeting that by the worst coincidence happened to be going on at the same time. My colleague and I started exchanging knowing looks as it dawned on us what had happened and we were silently trying to read each other for a clue as what to do. Own up to being complete bellend imposters, get up, apologise and walk out in shame…, or sit tight, blag it and ride it out like that dude did on the news that time. With no way of talking it out, the status quo prevailed and we rode it out before bailing at the first opportunity. I don’t think I’ve ever been as embarrassed in my life. We were then obviously also massively late for the real meeting. More embarrassment as I then had to blag further excuses for that. After everything, it turned out that they had no funds for us to provide the service so the whole thing was a waste of time!

A mate checked in for a return flight on the right day but at the (later) time of the outbound flight on the confirmation email. To make things worse, he was leading a school trip with twelve fifth grade kids and had to phone all their parents, sleep in the airport, and pay for their flights the next day (had to phone his wife to pay on her cc after his maxed out).

When I was 18 or so, drove overnight with three mates across France from Calais to a little town called St Hilaire. However, between driver changes during the night, we arrived at dawn in the wrong St Hilaire, some 800km away from the one we wanted.

I’ve got two:

1) I arrived a day early to the start of my first year at university. Embarrassing as I had made a big fuss of being grown up enough to sort my own travel there by bus, clearly I wasn’t. Extra humiliation points as the accommodation wasn’t unlocked and I had to get what seemed like half the entire university housing staff out of the office to sort the keys out.

2) whilst at Uni I used to occasionally do early morning swim training. It started at 6am and like most students I was crap at getting out of bed. One night I went out on the beers after swearing I’d be there the next morning. Cue paranoid nights sleep. At the appointed time I got up, had a quick breakfast, jumped on my bike and pedalled the 2 miles to the pool. I made the following assumptions on the way: 1) the clock on the huge clock tower has broken, it strangely read 2:50, not 5:50. 2) the student bars must have had a special night on as people were still coming home at 5:50 when normally they would have been kicked out around 3 am. 3) it was dark, in the summer it’s normally light at 5.50 and 4) my watch was also broken.

In retrospect I’m amazed I didn’t twig.

To be fair though, once the penny dropped (I stood outside the pool for 10 min waiting for everyone to turn up) I went home, got back into bed then got up again at the proper time. I was a bit tired though.