My last customer meeting ended at 2pm today, so when I was originally booking my round-trip flight, I wasn’t sure when they would have availability with me and arranged to come back on a 7pm flight. I called AA to rebook me onto an earlier flight, and they placed me on the 5pm flight. At the airport as I was finishing up some work emails, I received a cancellation notice for my flight. While on my computer, some massive grey clouds descended upon Boston Logan airport. For a while, I couldn’t even see through the window because it was like we were being fully drenched in endless streams of water. When the rain dissipated, I tried to go to the nearest gate to see if I could get on the next flight out. And I overheard that a small tornado hovered over the entire Boston Logan airport, resulting in countless cancelled flights, including mine.

I was imagining a tornado spinning, fully surrounding this airport, and imagining all these people, including myself, sitting there, typing away on their computers, reading on their smart phones, completely oblivious. I’m not sure if that is a good or a bad thing.

I silently dealt with the flight rebooking and sat down. Unfortunately, not everyone was as quiet as I was because some rather overweight gentleman came barreling through the crowds of people surrounding the gate I was at while on his phone, complaining at the top of his lungs how mad he was that he had to rebook flights and hotels due to the weather here and how terrible everything is for him. And when he wasn’t done, he proceeded to call four more people to tell them the exact same story. His voice was nearly at shouting volume. Many, many people turned to look his way to give him disapproving looks. He had zero self awareness.

I realize that everyone has different coping mechanisms when travel plans do not work out, but is it really necessary to be complaining loudly so everyone within 200 feet can hear about how horrible your life is when a flight gets cancelled or delayed… when literally every single person standing around you is facing the exact same thing?