Shit happens.

We are currently living in a very digital age in which you can buy just about anything from the internet including of course a holiday package. My job as a travel agent is actually going to be extinct in the near future but somehow, people still come to us. I’m not saying that the passengers who come to us are totally crazy for even thinking of using the services of a travel agent, I mean planning your own holiday can and will drive you mental at some point and some people doesn’t have the time to do it themselves which is why they come to us. However, there are some times when people use the services of a travel agent just so they have someone to blame if something goes wrong during their holiday. And trust me, for these kinds of people – something will definitely go wrong in one way or another. They somehow pull these unfortunate events towards them like some sort of a shit-magnet or something.

I’ve been working in the travel industry for a long time now that I have developed this talent to be able to read a customer just by the way they walked in the office, the way they spoke, the questions they’ve asked and the concerns they’ve raised. I once dealt with someone who claims she’s got asthma but when I told her that they have to upgrade their room to get a guaranteed non-smoking room due to hotel’s policy she refused to pay AED300 for that. Refusing to pay a measly AED300 for your own health is somewhat unreasonable don’t you think? She then came back to us after her holiday complaining about it – little did she know that I have kept all of our email conversations pertaining to the upgrade that I have offered her which she did not take. From that decision that she made, I already knew that she’ll come back to me with a complain which is why I took extra precautions to record each and every single conversation with her thru email. She actually did not complain only about the room, she complained about a lot of other things to which I think she spent a whole lot of time trying to pry on every single details of the services we have provided for her. I tell you, that woman did not enjoy her holiday because she was too busy looking for faults.

The very recent case which is the main reason of this rant was a passenger complaining about the car which broke down while they were enroute to another city during their holiday. I’m not very sure about you but if that happens to me during a holiday, I’d be pissed of course but I’ll probably just laugh it off and consider it a part of my adventure. I might come back from that vacation telling my friends about that time when we were stuck in the middle of nowhere and we had to push the car to the nearest gasoline station to get it fixed and I’d be proud of it even. (For the record, the passengers did not push the car as a new replacement was sent immediately) I mean, it’s nobody’s fault. It’s not like I deliberately planned for that to happen nor did the driver. News flash: cars break down. Yes, you paid for that service but shit happens. Unfortunately, it happened to you and not to someone else who’s got a more positive outlook in life.

We had to investigate what exactly happened but couldn’t find faults since the car used was actually in a good condition. It broke down which is a very normal occurrence for just about anything. Our suppliers, even if they were not at fault, tried to pacify the clients offering them a lot of things for free but the passengers kept their gloomy attitude and pushed on with the complaint. I feel bad about it, for the honest people who tried their very best to make these clients happy even if they were not at fault.

To make the long story short, the main point of this blog is to let people know that sometimes, shit happens – you just gotta learn to flush. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just a simple fact of life.