Assuming Responsibility for One's Mistakes

In June 1992, I was invited by a trade association to appear on a panel at a convention in Biloxi, Mississippi on behalf of my employer. I couldn't get a good airfare through our regular travel agent, but a co-worker of mine said that he could get me a great fare, although I would have to fly out of Newark and I would have to leave at 7 a.m.

At the time I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and my first choice airport was LaGuardia, but I have never been one to shy away from a good airfare, so I told him to go ahead and make the reservations. When he got the tickets he handed them to me and said, remember, you're leaving out of Newark. The morning of the flight, the car service picked me up at 5 a.m. (one of my better habits is arriving at the airport early, remember this was 1992) and everything was going smoothly. As we were about to make the exit off the New Jersey Turnpike to Newark airport, I glanced again at my ticket and saw to my horror it said "LaGuardia!"

It was about 5:50 a.m. and I gasped, nearly panicking. I gave the driver my company credit card to pay the fare to New York. He then told me it would be an additional $45 to go to LaGuardia. I told him not to worry. We got to the terminal at LaGuardia at 6:35 (going against the rush hour traffic direction through lower Manhattan, the Williamsburg Bridge and the BQE). I reached into my wallet and gave him $65 including the tip and tolls and thanked him for his skilled driving (he did the speed limit, too!).

I made the flight with ten minutes to spare, the panel was a great success, gave me some nice visibility and led to my appearance on another panel in New Orleans six months later. When I returned to work I told my boss what happened and we both had a good laugh. He told me it was alright to include the trip from Newark to LaGuardia on my expense report. I told him that I couldn't do that. Regardless of whether or not someone else made my travel arrangements, it was my responsibility to examine the tickets and it was my failure to examine them carefully that led to the additional fare. Accordingly, it was my responsibility to make sure it never happened again and there were two ways for this to happen:

1.) Pay the additional cost out of my own pocket.

2.) Make my own travel arrangements from this point forward.

Flash forward to August 18, 2003 at 6 a.m. Mércia and I were returning from Brazil and after waiting 45 minutes in line for immigration, (after a ten hour flight delayed two days by the East Coast blackout) we finally got to the customs area to retrieve our bags: one green wheeled duffle bag and one black wheeled duffle bag. I saw the green bag and saw the black duffle sitting next to it. I put them both on a cart and we cleared customs, got into a cab and went home.

As I looked at the black duffle, I checked the name and saw to my horror, that it was not mine. I almost screamed. The brand, color and design were exactly the same as my bag, but as I examined the luggage tag, I knew it was not the same one. [ed. note: Just as an aside, this is the most compelling reason I have seen for clear, legible luggage tags. Thank God he had them!]

I called the number on the tag and left a message for the bag owner. I then called the airline and got the local number for the baggage service. The baggage service people had my bag at the airport. I finally reached the owner of the bag I had mistakenly taken, who was amazingly gracious considering the circumstances. His only request was that he needed the bag by 12 noon.

I'm one of those New Yorkers who doesn't own a car, although I know how to drive. It makes no sense for us to own a car. We get around town during the week via the subway and buses, we have no children and on those occasions when we have needed a car, we've rented one. The only responsible way for me to get my bag back and get this man his bag was to take a cab to JFK Airport and get another cab home to get my bag back. I then had to take a cab from my apartment in Queens to the Lower East Side to return this bag to its owner. $80 worth of cab fares later, everyone had their own bag and I went off to work.

When I got to work I told some of my colleagues what had happened. They asked me why I didn't have the airline deliver my bag to me or bring this man his bag back to the airport and have them deliver it to him. I told them that it was my mistake and I had to assume the responsibility for rectifying it, which I did. As in the other instance, I have taken steps to prevent this from happening again:

1.) I really read carefully the luggage labels and compare the numbers.

2.) I have put distinctive luggage tags on that will enable to ascertain that the luggage is mine.

Both of these experiences were nerve-wracking and alarming, but in the grand scheme of things were pretty insignificant. Nevertheless, the all-too-vivid memories of how much grief I put myself through both of these times are probably the greatest deterrents against something like these mini-nightmares to happen again.

So with plenty of eggs whirling around the Potomac and Langley, Virginia with faces in high places their destinations, in this rationale squirmathon, why can't someone in the "party of personal responsibility" just own up to their mistakes? It's very therapeutic. Trust me.

Comments

[Joel]

Amen, Randy.

[Kombiz]

Randy,

Nice story.

Maybe they won't discuss their mistakes because it means having a serious discussion about how we correctly prosecute foreign policy, an honest rationale for a war that isn't politicaly popular and the god forsaken risk of having to back paddle and having to pick a reason why we went to war. If it's humanitarian, surely there were better ways to cobble together a coalition to seriously threaten future dictators who were slaughtering their citizens.

Then again if your point is to delitigitimize international institutions, paint over your political opponents as weak on security, make your party look like it's the only one who cares about protecting americans, break a 55 year tradition of american foreign policy for a nationalistic realist brand of foreign policy that seems to work on paper it may be better to hope that no one notices the mistakes you made executing the lead up war and the aftermath to war.

Just my 2 cents.