Cath Adam, Chemistry Lead Consultant. Stranded in the Caribbean.
My adventure began on Sunday 11th April when I left London Gatwick airport 10.00am with only carry on baggage of a tiny suitcase fully believing that I would be returning to Gatwick 5 days later. Well this was obviously not going to be the case!!! I am writing this sitting in Boston Airport on Monday 26th April, 15 days later still with my tiny carry on suitcase (now bulging) and hoping against hope that nothing more happens between now and 7:45pm that may keep me from getting on my Virgin Atlantic flight home to the UK at last!!! The story of how I got here is, what I would call, a complete palaver!!!
I transferred as planned from Barbados to Jamaica via St Maarten. I was supposed to be there for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday meetings, flying out on Thursday evening to be at home on Friday morning. We had planned it that way as I needed to be back for my cousin’s wedding, Mum and I were doing a “girlie weekend road trip” up to the wedding in Cheltenham meeting all the family there. I had been so looking forward to it that when the email, multiple missed calls to my UK phone and a panicked Jamaican assistant had disturbed me during a conference call my heart sank and I realised I was hardly listening to the poor person on the other end of the phone. My first thought was just to get home in time for the wedding. I got online to look up news articles to try to find out what was happening. Called Mum, as a news junkie she always knows what's going on, then got in the hold queue for Virgin Atlantic with millions of others trying to get through. Bit by bit realising that the chance of getting back in time for the wedding was pretty non-existent. By the time I got through to Virgin about an hour later the lovely woman on the end of the phone filled me in on her side of things. She said that there would be no flights out of Jamaica till the Thursday so the best she could do for me was to fly me out of St Lucia on the Monday if I could get myself there. I got back to my travel booker who then got me booked on the flights to get me there in time. There was not enough time to change planes at Miami (as their passport control is so unbelievably abysmal that you can not get through in less than 2 hours!) so I would have to stay there for the night which looking back was a god send as I was by then completely out of Knickers!!! And no girl will ever even consider wearing a pair of knickers 2 days on the trot! Plus I only had a business dress (a suit and some shirts) with me.
After checking into the hotel (and on asking the Mexican male receptionist what the event was that was going on tomorrow and getting the answer “mmm how should I say? I think it is the Homosexuals parade” !!!) I found out where the nearest Victoria’s Secrets was and quickly went to buy out their spring line. I stopped off in a few stores on the way buying T-Shirts and something to wear from an evening in Miami spending far more than I could afford but hey, what was I supposed to do? I was stranded wasn’t I? ;0) I had also found out to my joy that a colleague from my client was also there over night so I had someone to have dinner with on South Beach! Yea! A few hours later and a sore head I was back at the airport, new pants and purchases rammed into my tiny case but happy that my travel trauma was soon to be over. After 5 flights in 4 days straight I was tired and ready to go home…….
I got to St Lucia (by the way it’s BEAUTIFUL, I will definitely go back there some time) which was boiling, and as soon as I got to passport control the smug guy laughed at me and said all flights were canceled for at least a week back to the UK. Nice. Thanks! I kept a brave face and thanked him for the information and then went to get a cab to my hotel…..or so they call it. I asked the cab driver if it was a nice hotel and he simply said “NO”! “Oh” says I, “Well are there any others around here”. “No” says my friendly cabbie who didn’t even want to take me to the hostel as he called it, as he said it was embarrassing for St Lucia to show me it!! Great. Things are looking up! He told me that all the BA crew and passengers from the flight that were supposed to go on Thursday were staying at the only hotel near by and there were no rooms till the European airports opened! Great! So I got him to take me back to the airport to the tourist desk to book another hotel. The nearest town was an hours drive away.
When I got there I immediately resumed my Internet information frenzy to find out if the flights were going to go. After 2 hours on hold I got another wonderful woman called Justine who told me that she had had loads of people on the phone having a go at her because their flights were cancelled! What was she supposed to have done? Gone all the way to the un-say-able place in Iceland and light the volcano herself just to piss them off? Poor thing. She and I had a good chat about the chances of flights going and agreed on a flight on Wednesday 21st out of Barbados which was the earliest one she could get me on but she really didn’t think that there was much chance of this going either. They had been told at that point and I had read on all the websites that it would be the end of the week at least till it was cleared. There was at this point still the fear that the bigger volcano next door would go off and cause even more nightmares! The other flights that she had as options by then were Miami on the 26th, New York on the 27th and Atlanta on the 2nd May!
So…. It was Saturday night by then and I was exhausted. I had a room covered in chintz and no air conditioning and I finally fell asleep hopeful that tomorrow would bring more luck.
Sunday came and after waking up looking like a school of mosquitoes had been given a lesson by a vampire on how to suck blood all over my body, I had a conversation with the ever-faithful Teresa back in the UK who had also been hawk-eyed watching the news, we decided that the woman at Virgin had probably been right. The news was by then that there would be very little chance of flights until the weekend but they were ever hopeful every day that it would clear. I also met a US Army Helicopter pilot who told me that the main problem was not the airlines, who would fly as soon as they possibly could, but it was more the insurance companies. They would not let the planes up until they knew that they wouldn’t get damaged. Knowing how long each day was adding to the wait with thousands of passengers every day adding to the list of people needing to be repatriated I decided to call Virgin back and get a later flight with more chance that it would go. By this time they had got wise and had a call back system (unless you really liked their hold music!) What a relief that I did! I called them and had a chat with another wonderful Virgin customer services woman called Samantha Horrocks (no relation to Jane). I told her what the US Army guy had said and she completely agreed. She had been chatting to the people at Virgin and although she thought there was a chance it would clear before the end of the week she said that they had been told that when it did clear there would be limited flights allowed to land at the beginning and that she thought Heathrow and Manchester would open first meaning there was very little chance my flight would go. So she looked into the other options for me. At this point it was getting really silly. Miami was 6th May (meaning I would land on my Birthday!), Barbados 29th April but she did find one flight out of Boston on the 26th. I went for it.
I had at least a day or 2 in St Lucia. T and I had agreed that I should make the most of being there and try to get some meetings in with people from LIME (my Client) while I was there so I knew I was there for a while. Ginger problem…. I think so. I had to get 4 things. Sun cream, mosquito spray, a hat and a summer dress!! It was BOILING! So I covered up as best I could in a work shirt and skirt and walked down to the town. There I found an English woman who had a shop that sold all the above and was so excited to sell me everything she possibly could and tell me that she had heard on the news that there was NO chance of me getting back for at least a week if not more! There were over 50,000 Brits stranded she told me. With excitement!! A few Eastern Caribbean dollars later I walked back to the hotel wearing all my new purchases. But it was already too late….
I woke the next morning to even more mozzy bites but to add to that I now had sunburn, really bad heat rash and eczema to boot. I just didn’t know which part of me to scratch first! It all itched. How I had managed to get burned through a shirt and cream and the fact that it rained all afternoon I will never know but that my friends is the joy of ginger skin!!!
It was at that point that I had a bit of a sense of humor failure. I didn’t know where I was going, when or with who! I was in a pretty grotty hotel and was being eaten alive and it had all ceased to be an adventure and started to just piss me off. I really just wanted to go home. I spoke to T who told me that one of the guys I was going to meet was on Holiday and I had found out that the other person was an hour and a half away by cab which would have cost me another $100 each way. It made more sense to do that one over the phone! I had to get to Boston and had to find somewhere to go for a week. I had so many offers from lovely friends at my client company but decided that the best (and cheapest) option was to get back into the USA and go to my sisters for the week in Nashville to wait it out there until the Monday flight from Boston. Travel Lloyd at Dial-a-flight got on the case like the hero he always is and got me booked on the last seat for the Nashville – Boston stretch.
So off I went again. Back to Miami with another quick stop off at Victoria’s secrets…. a girl’s gotta have clean knickers! The worrying thing is that they recognised me as I went in and all laughed at the fact that I was still here!!! Brilliant!! I had become a minor celebrity in the knickers store!! After what felt like a years wait at Miami again I finally made it at 12.00 midnight to Nashville where my sister and her husband were waiting at the gate with a sign saying “Volcano Refugees”. I had made it to a familiar face at last. I was so pleased to feel in some way I was home.
So this was the good bit. A surprise visit with my sister and bro-in-law in Nashville. They were at work all day so I got to get sooo much work done. Brilliant! Maybe I should get stranded more often. My Bro-in-law is also in a band so on Saturday night I boarded the tour bus with the guys and we went on tour to Austen in Texas! Woo hoo. It was so cool. Slept on a bunk, drank beer (and red wine) and had a great time. However the tour bus would not be back in Nashville till 10.00am on Monday morning so straight after the concert I was whisked directly to yet another airport to get a flight back to Nashville so that I could make my flight to Boston that left at 6.30am in the morning.
The last leg….. or maybe not!!!
My cab came at 5am, just to be on the safe side, I didn’t want any more traumas! I got to the airport at 5.15 but the machine didn’t want to accept my passport. I got a lady over to get me booked in who told me that I was on hold but not to worry it was just procedure! The flight was delayed till 7.20 already so I got to the gate as soon as I could but it didn’t open till 6.00. At 6 the lady had a look at my ticket and said dismissively “the flight was over booked so I probably wouldn’t be able to get on today”. I looked at her in horror and asked if she was joking? I asked why it was me that was bumped and was told that I was the last person to check in. Apparently everyone else had checked in online the night before. I was told at that point that they may see if someone would be willing to take another flight and was asked to just wait and see what happened. They were not going to close the flight till 30 mins before the flight time so I still had about 45 mins to wait. I sat with my leg jiggling nervously waiting for news and after a while went back to the desk to check. At that point the deadpan lady said in the 3rd person that some people get very angry when this happens. I told her that I certainly wouldn’t get angry but I may spontaneously burst into tears if I didn’t get on the flight. I did at least get a smile at that!! I then went and sat back in my seat and a nice man in cowboy boots and a suit (well I was in Nashville) asked me if the flight was leaving. I told him that it was delayed till 7.20 but my voice cracked as I said it. He asked me if I was ok so I told him that I might not be able to get on the flight. He asked why which I explained and so he asked my name and leapt up saying, “right, let’s get you on this flight”. He went off and offered them his ticket so that I could get on but by that stage they explained that there was a guy who had checked in online but had not showed up so there may be a way we could both go. This finally transpired to be the case and we finally both got on the flight. Only to be delayed by a further hour as there were some mechanical difficulties with the plane! Nice!
This still wasn’t the end!!!
When we got to Washington Regan airport we all had to get off the flight and get back on. They said they would call us when the flight was boarding again so I went to the coffee stand just by the gate to get a cup of tea. I realised they were boarding when I noticed a couple from the flight rushing past and to the gate. When they said they would call the flight they literally meant that they would shout out that the Boston flight was boarding. No announcement or anything. Just a shout! I was the last one back on the plane with a genuine concern by this point that fate was giving me a very strong signal that I shouldn’t be on the flight!!!
We got to Boston and after another 8 hour wait I finally got my boarding card and got on the flight back to the UK! Finally! Phew!!!!!
Just as a point of reference, here are all the flights I took in 2 weeks! No wonder I’m exhausted!!
Sunday 11th April - London Gatwick to Barbados = Virgin Atlantic
Wednesday 14th April – Barbados to St Maarten = Caribbean Airlines
Wednesday 14th April – St Maarten to Jamaica = Caribbean Airlines
Thursday 15th April – Jamaica to London Gatwick = Virgin Atlantic – CANCELLED
Friday 16th April – Jamaica to Miami = American Airlines
Saturday 17th April – Miami to St Lucia = American Airlines
Sunday 18th April – St Lucia to London Gatwick = Virgin Atlantic – CANCELLED
Monday 19th April – St Lucia to Miami = American Airlines
Monday 19th April – Miami to Nashville = American Airlines
Sunday 20th April – Austen to Nashville = Southwest Airlines
Monday 26th April – Nashville to Washington = American Eagle – Nearly Not!
Monday 26th April – Washington to Boston = American Eagle – Nearly Not!
Monday 26th April – Boston to London Heathrow = Virgin Atlantic
Any one for a Summer Holiday in Cornwall this summer???
Mark Swain, Chemistry Lead Consultant. Stranded in Lanzarote.
Like 50,000 other Brits, I was stranded abroad by the volcanic ash – in Lanzarote (culturally Spanish, geographically African). OK, as my boss would probably say, he found it difficult to have empathy with someone who is stuck with 28 degree temperatures and a sea view. But the situation was a bit surreal, with varying degrees of apathy and panic. In between planning a route home, my mind wandered to reflecting on the people and performance issues you see in a situation like that.
For the first time in 5 years we’d booked a package holiday. That was great in a number of ways 1) it pretty much guaranteed us a ride home (although the question of when was a more tricky one) and 2) it brought us into contact with the unique species – the holiday rep. This showed up the importance of selecting the right people for such a frontline role. There were two reps at our hotel a) the “Super Rep” and b) the “Blooper Rep”. They each represented one of the two biggest holiday firms in the UK, but I’m invoking the “no names policy”. So how did they respond? As the name suggests, every time “Blooper Rep” opened her mouth it was closely followed by her foot. I didn’t hear any swearing, but there was pretty much everything else directed towards customers – tears, aggression, stress, stroppiness, lack of any empathy and refusal to help. We all could have coped with that, if there was any good information being given - all we got was a “rabbit in the headlights”. You realise how quickly someone’s reputation disappears.......
So what about the “Super Rep”? No prizes for guessing what they did. When news of the volcanic ash broke he simply made himself visible. He popped up everywhere, speaking to anyone and everyone to gauge feelings and help where he could. Not surprisingly, when he had to deliver bad news, it couldn’t be his fault, could it?! So is this good customer service, or a different personality being able to stand up to conflict and crisis?
If businesses didn’t change and have problems, or throw up daily challenges, then I’m sure “Blooper Rep” would be fine. But your business isn’t like that...no-one’s is these days. I’d argue that a robust selection process would have weeded out someone like that. Could she have coped if she had more life experience or learning? OK, I admit that this was an impossible situation, and one that you couldn’t expect the reps to deal with perfectly. So why the difference in performance? Maybe there was a lack of skills and experience, but I’d argue it’s more about values, beliefs and personality. No amount or customer service training can teach you how to respond in that situation – you either have the right basic approach or you don’t.
Safely back in the UK (5 days late) my reflections are of people – some star performers , most doing a decent job, and a few that just couldn’t stand up to the pressure. This sounds very similar to many of the teams we assess and develop. Perhaps those in the “decent job” category could have been great, if only their managers had coached them better. The fact that most of the reps’ managers “hid” from the problems is a point for another day. So....selecting the right personalities for your business is absolutely critical. You can provide all the training and professional development you can find, but when push comes to shove people judge your business on approach and attitudes. Do what my wife did – build a team that drives and builds and delivers results, so that when you have an “enforced absence” you can lie on the beach and soak up the sun!