For many years, my family would take trips with other family members. All of these trips had one thing in common: my aunt, uncle, and cousins would be late for everything. This used to really irritate my parents, who are pretty punctual and had a lot more kids to organise (four of us) compared to my two cousins.

By mutual agreement, any other family involved in these outings decided to go along with my parents and give [Aunt] and [Uncle] the wrong time. For example, if an event started at 11:00 am, they’d be told 10:00 am. This was pretty effective until [Aunt] and [Uncle] started realising they were being given the wrong time. I believe other family members explained why that was and that they were fed up with always waiting on them or being late.

[Aunt] and [Uncle] weren’t very self-aware and didn’t realise they were the issue, so they decided that it wasn’t their fault and told my parents:

Aunt & Uncle: “Give us the right time from now on, and you’ll see we aren’t the problem!”

My parents (especially my mam) hate the idea of people missing out on something, but they are also prepared to let a natural consequence occur if it’s not too harsh.

The very next week, we had a day trip booked on the ferry. This was something we did once a year, over to the UK and back in one day. It was fondly known as a “booze cruise” back in the day due to the opportunity to purchase cheap alcohol. Kids would explore the ship and when we docked, we’d raid the pick-n-mix and buy confections that we couldn’t get at home. It was something everyone looked forward to a lot. (What can I say? It was the early 1990s.)

With the best will in the world, the ferry waits for no man. So, it was a sad day for four people who were told the ferry left at 8:00 am sharp (the correct time) and who arrived after 8:30 to see a small, ferry-shaped speck in the distance, heading toward the UK.

Sadly, it didn’t make them any more punctual after that, but they were always told the correct time as requested, and if they were late, we didn’t wait anymore. For months, whenever we’d see them after that, my parents used to cheerily wave and say, “Ferry nice to see you!”

Related:
Time Is Just A Social Construct, Or Something

In June of 2022, it took us three days to get to Cadiz, Spain, from Denver… which was the plan… and it sucked.

When searching for plane tickets to Seville (which has the closest international airport to Cadiz) in January, prices were $1,400 and up. So, when I saw it was cheaper to fly into Lisbon, Portugal, and out of Malaga, Spain, I went for it. I was thinking that Lisbon was closer to Seville and Cadiz than Madrid was, and there would be a train straight to Cadiz — a short ride, I thought. The tickets ended up being $1,250 each.

If I could do it again, I would fly into Madrid, maybe stay overnight there, and then take the high-speed train to Seville and on to Cadiz. Flights into Madrid were cheaper than into Seville. I can’t remember how much, though. And I didn’t know much about the trains in Spain at that time. They are excellent.

Remembering my thought process is a little fuzzy, but after I bought our plane tickets with [Airline #1], I remember looking at trains to Seville from Lisbon, and it was going to be like an eight-plus-hour train ride — not direct, nor fast. So, then, I looked at flights from Lisbon to Seville, and on one low-cost airline, [Airline #2], the flights were like $50. There we go — perfect.

Well, we had two checked bags, and later, my wife decided to bring her bodyboard, so there was a third. The initial purchase of the [Airline #2] tickets with two bags was $256. The bodyboard added another $50 or so. I paid for that separately a few days before we left. So, buying the tickets to Lisbon didn’t save us any money.

On the day of our flight, we had our housesitter drive us to Union Station to drop us off so we wouldn’t have to pay for parking at the airport. The “A” train to the Denver airport was great — the start of our adventure.

When we got to the [Airline #1] counter to check in and drop off our bags, the guy at the counter immediately got a very puzzled look on his face, and after a few minutes, he got a woman to help him. She also got a puzzled look on her face.

Airline #1 Employee: “Were you originally flying through Montreal instead of Toronto?”

Me: “Yes. I responded to an email that said we’d been moved to a later flight through Toronto instead of Montreal. That email said I had to confirm this change, and I did.”

The process to do that was confusing, but I thought I had completed it successfully. 

It took probably thirty minutes to get that sorted out. The woman had to get on the phone with somebody and wait on hold, during which time we were holding up the check-in line for this flight. This included the “Priority” passengers, who were complaining and getting pissed. There were only two [Airline #1] people checking people in at one counter.

Eventually, one of them got on a different terminal to help other people check in. They told us it wasn’t our fault, which made me feel a little better. And the airline ended up not charging us for the additional checked bag (the bodyboard), which we considered a big win. Now, for some reason, they put us in middle seats about ten rows apart, but luckily, no one was in the window seat next to me, so my wife was able to come back and join me. 

The rest of the flight to Toronto was uneventful. We were supposed to have an hour-and-a-half layover in Toronto, but our flight was delayed almost an hour, so we ended up flying out of there at midnight East Coast time.

I think it was a seven-hour flight from Toronto to Lisbon, but when we landed we had to wait on the plane for a gate for about an hour. That sucked.

Then, we got off the plane and walked down about three football fields’ worth of hallways until we got to this massive line of humans waiting to go through passport control (immigration). It ended up being almost three hours before we got through that, had our luggage, and were ready for transport to our [Homestay Rental] in Lisbon. 

I had very prudently lined up a taxi-type service that had English-speaking drivers; we don’t speak Portuguese. Shortly after we got in the passport line, I suggested that we contact that company and/or our driver to tell him our situation.

Driver #1: “I’ll wait for an hour, and that’s all I’m required to do. But let me know when you’re almost out of immigration, customs, and all of that.”

When we were almost through, we contacted him again.

Driver #1: “I’m like forty-five minutes away. It’ll be faster for you to just get a cab.”

When he asked, he said we wouldn’t be getting a refund. Thank you very little — $29 lost.

So, we waited in line for a taxi for another twenty-five minutes. I asked our driver if he spoke English, and he said he did, but he barely did. He drove us through the winding streets of historical Lisbon and then stopped.

Driver #2: “You can get out here and walk down these stairs, and your place will be down there somewhere. It will be easier to walk down with all of your luggage than up.”

Wife: “No, you need to drive us closer.”

She showed him where it was on her phone. He drove us down below, took a left turn, and stopped a little later.

Driver #2: “You can walk from here.”

Wife: “It’s over here.” *Show him her phone again* “You can get us closer by going this way.”

Just then, the band started playing REALLY LOUDLY in a park across the street. I couldn’t hear anything they were talking about. I was so f****** tired, so sick of traveling, and so sick of being in this guy’s cab. I was losing my mind. I had to get out and walk away from them for a moment to try to keep it together.

Eventually, the driver took us up over the top again and back down to where he had taken a left before, went straight about thirty feet, and stopped.

Driver #2: “It’s up this alley.”

I had no confidence that we’d find our homestay, but my wife thought it was close. We walked up that alley maybe another fifty feet.

Wife: “Here it is!”

She found the key and we went inside.

This was the end of our second day of traveling. Holy s***!

We spent kind of a fun evening exploring central Lisbon, walking around, having some drinks, eating some Portuguese food — and hardly bickering with each other at all.

By the way, I should have bought our train tickets from Seville to Cadiz that night, but it totally slipped my mind. And after what happened with our travels the next day we likely would have missed it.

That night was the first night that we had to deal with jet lag. We needed to go to sleep when our bodies thought it like 4:00 pm. I took some Dramamine and eventually got to sleep. My wife chose to wake me up only thirty minutes before our driver was coming to pick us up. This was not good for me. I was flustered and stressed and not awake. We fumbled through figuring out how the coffee machine worked and got a couple of hits of coffee. 

We walked out of our homestay, and within twenty feet, a wheel broke off of the brand-new roller suitcase that I had bought for this trip. Really? It was still attached by about a two-by-four-inch strip of the material the suitcase was made of, so it was sort of dangling and flapping as I pulled my bag. I was off to a bad start… and this was the start of day three.

The cab took us to the airport with no problem, and the driver was interesting to talk to.

We got to the Lisbon airport, went to check in, and gave them our bags. The representative there working for [Airline #2] was a contractor who didn’t actually work for [Airline #2].

Airline #2 Employee: “You just missed checking in online by twenty minutes. You’ll have to pay $55 each.”

F-word! F-word! F-word! That was $110 down the toilet. Total trickery. Total scam. Intentionally designed to suck more money out of people. We had to check bags, so we were going to have to talk to one of their people. There was no justification for it.

One thing did make me feel really good. The lady checking in in front of us left her Brazilian passport at the [Airline #2] counter. I was able to catch up to her and give her back her passport. She was very appreciative.

The flight was around forty-five minutes late leaving Lisbon, but it was a short flight to Seville, and it was uneventful. And apparently, because we were already inside the EU, we didn’t have to go through immigration or anything like that again. Also, nobody asked to see our vaccination cards or anything. We had done this online thing with the Spanish Department of Health that was kind of a pain, but oh, well. That felt like a win.

We got our luggage and then found the line to take the bus to the train station.

With hindsight, this is where we should have just taken a cab — and we should have stopped in the airport and bought our train tickets to Cadiz online. It ended up that we basically took a public bus to the train station. I thought it was going to be a shuttle-type thing that only went back and forth to the train station, but no. I thought had I paid for tickets just to the train station, and I told the bus driver we wanted the train station, but little did we know that it was going to be the second stop in his route. I was studying the map of the stops on the wall of the bus, and I concluded it was going to be the second stop.

We may have heard the announcement for the first stop, but we definitely missed the announcement for the stop for the train station. I also thought it was going to be a big, obvious, visible train station. And did I mention that the bus was packed, standing room only? And we seemed to be the only people with a ton of luggage. And it was hot on the bus.

When we realized we had missed the second stop, we asked the driver to let us off. My wife told him we didn’t hear the announcement, and he rolled his eyes. We jumped off the bus with all of our luggage, not knowing how far back the train station was, and my mood went black. I couldn’t believe we’d made another mistake. Am I too hard on myself? Yes, I am. It was still disappointing. I immediately wanted to take a cab, but my wife looked at the map on her phone and said that it was only a few blocks away.

We started rolling our bags on the sidewalk, which were made of thousands of little tiles, which the wheels on our bags didn’t like — especially mine. I noticed that there was a bike lane that ran parallel to the sidewalk, and it was smooth, but it was used by bikes. We proceeded up the oncoming bike lane, and when we saw a bike coming, we pulled our bags out of the bike lane back to the sidewalk until the bikes passed.

And did I mention it was over ninety degrees?

We continued with this process until we got to a restaurant that was across the street from the train station. We decided to stop there to get something to eat because we hadn’t eaten anything that day so far.  

And here’s where, if I had thought of it, I would have used my wife’s phone to buy the train tickets online or gone over to the train station to buy tickets while my wife waited at the restaurant. Or, we could’ve kept going on to the train station to buy our tickets, where we would’ve found out that there were a bunch of restaurant options at the train station. But I didn’t think to do any of those, so the earliest train we could get to Cadiz was at like 7:45 pm. We got to the train station around 4:00 pm, so it was almost a four-hour wait.

My wife was really mad at me because I was in charge of transportation. She proceeded to look into any and all transportation options while I was stressing hard that if we didn’t buy the train tickets right then, we’d be on the 10:00 pm train if there even was one. Eventually, she exhausted all of the options she could find to get us to Cadiz sooner, and I was able to buy our train tickets.

She’s still mad at me about this.

My family went on a vacation to a famous city in Italy during spring last year. During the trip, we visited a small local souvenir shop selling glass pieces. The store was empty with only the owner working. That should have been a hint since the two stores beside them (which also sold glass pieces) had other customers.

My father and I were both carrying backpacks on our backs. My mother and I walked into the store first to “ooh” and “aah” over the beautiful pieces. My father was about to enter, and we noticed that he was stopped by the owner, and then he started to carry his backpack with his hands.

Me: “What happened?”

Father: “There’s a sign on the door asking people with backpacks to carry their backpacks in their hands.”

I looked back and saw the sign… as well as the owner, who hadn’t returned to her cashier desk but was standing quite close to us with an annoyed expression and staring in our direction.

I quickly smiled, apologized, and started carrying my backpack with my hands.

But she still stood there and stared at us like a hawk. We moved to the back of the store, and every time I looked back, she was about two meters away from us and just staring with an annoyed look. She didn’t greet us, offer us help, or organize the stock. The whole time, she also never said a word to us.

My father excused himself and left the store, but the owner was still staring at my mother and me. Then, another woman and a man walked into the store. The man was carrying a backpack on his back. The owner looked at them briefly and then continued to stare at us. My mother quickly suggested we leave, so we did.

We talked afterward and concluded that the owner was probably treating us like thieves. The difference in treatment was weird. But my mother suggested that it might have been that we were Asian and the owner had recently been stolen from and the thief just so happened to be Asian, too.

We just shrugged it off and went to another store, where the owner was very friendly, and we got the products we wanted to gift and keep for ourselves.

But to be honest, treating your customers like thieves is an extremely bad way to do business.

I had plans to go away on vacation to the Caribbean for five nights with a long-time friend. It was not all-inclusive, so we would be responsible for paying for food, drinks, and any activities.

We were discussing our plans.

Friend: “How much are you bringing in cash?”

Me: “I’m bringing $300 cash, plus my debit and credit cards.”

Friend: “I’m going to bring $300 cash, too, but I’m not bringing any cards. I’m on a budget, and $300 is my limit.”

Me: “That only comes to around $60 per day. This isn’t one of the cheaper Caribbean islands, so food and drink alone won’t leave you with much left over. You need to factor in cabs, incidentals, or any activities we may decide to do. And you never know if an emergency will come up where you will need money.”

Friend: “That’s why I have you!”

And she started to laugh. That pissed me off to no end.

Me: “We are both adults who are responsible for our own selves. It would be one thing if you lost your purse and needed money; I’d float you the money before you even had time to ask. But to purposely use me as your backup ATM is not going to work. Not that I know what you’re up to, I’m not going along with it. If you run out of money, you will just be a**ed out and hungry. You need to bring your cards with you for your own good.”

Friend: “You don’t have to be so harsh!” *Pauses* “Fine. I’ll bring some extra money, but I’m not bringing cards.”

Me: “Do what you want, but if there’s an emergency, you are on your own.”

I posted about this online to vent my frustration, and I got a lot of feedback and suggestions that truly did save the vacation. I’ll hit the highlights.

Some commenters said that the hotel would want a credit card on file from the person who made the reservation. [Friend] was the one who booked the vacation; she put the whole thing on her credit card because she wanted the card “points”. I told her that because the reservation was booked through a third-party app, the hotel would need the original card used to make the reservation, so she was on the hook to bring her credit card. I have no idea if that was true or not, but it sounded good based on what everyone commented! She was not happy that her own greed got her, but at least she brought a credit card.

Others mentioned that [Friend] was going to sulk. And sulk she did. When we got to the airport:

Me: “I’m not going to spend this vacation in your misery. We should hash this out right now.”

Friend: “Your tone is very rude! It’s like you’re accusing me of trying to mooch off of you!”

She was.

Me: “Put yourself in my shoes. You’re deliberately being irresponsible, and you told me to my face that I’m your backup plan and laughed about it. It made me feel used and put-upon.”

Friend: “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Me: “Thank you. I’m sorry I was so harsh.”

Some commenters said [Friend] would try to be content with cutting corners. Cabs were prohibitively expensive on the island, and they didn’t take credit cards. So, [Friend] looked up how to take the local buses. I was fine with that until we waited forty-five minutes in the heat for a bus to take us to the mall. (Island time…) Yup, we only took cabs after that.

A few mentioned that [Friend] would probably go through her cash in the first two days. They were close: it took two and a half days. There were several markets with local jewelry and crafts that she absolutely loved and they only took… cash. So, she ran through her money rather quickly. She only brought her credit card, not her debit card. So, as someone suggested, I made her Zelle me right then and there the money I took out of the ATM for her. She paid for the exchange and ATM fees.

[Friend] “tried it” with the meals; she ordered something big and wanted to “split” the bill evenly. Normally, I would not nitpick about that, but I just didn’t want her to feel like she’d still gotten one over on me in any way. Since she used her credit card for meals (to save the cash she had), I paid what I owed in cash and she paid the rest (her higher portion) with her credit card.

Overall, we had a good time. We did a few excursions, had shopping and beach time, and relaxed. She even told me it was a good thing she’d brought her credit card. Things only got weird when I asked her to Zelle me right then and there at the ATM before I gave her the cash, but she knew why I was being so hard-nosed about it.

Caller: “Would I be able to get a replacement for my iPhone that got damaged on my vacation?”

Me: “If you send it in for repair, we can have a look at it.”

Caller: “I can’t really send it in. I dropped it.”

Me: “Did you drop it somewhere unobtainable?”

Caller: “Kind of. I dropped it into a volcano.”

Me: “A volcano?”

Caller: “Yeah, I was in Hawaii, and they take you on these helicopter tours, and I put my phone out too far, and… well…”

Me: “I don’t think we can replace it, then, sir.”

Caller: “I thought I would try.”

We end the call. A while later, I hear one of my coworkers speaking to a customer.

Coworker: “No, sir, it doesn’t matter that it’s only a ‘mildly active volcano’…”