I was working for GTE in 1984 and I had my first business trip--to Santa Cruz, CA, to attend a training class. (Yeah, I know, nice trip.) The trip got terrifically screwed up. The first thing I remember was seeing a picket line in front of Boston Logan's Terminal E. The sign said, "Continental's experienced pilots are on strike." Then there was snow in Denver, hours of delay, and of course I missed my connection to San Jose. They sent me to San Francisco, where I tried to rent a car. But it was past 11pm, and due to the Democratic Party Convention then going on, there were no rental cars to be had. I had a fistful of cash that the company had advanced me. So I convinced a cabbie to drive me to Santa Cruz. It cost $250: everything I had. We drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, but I couldn't see the ocean due to the darkness and fog. The rest of the trip my boss had to buy my dinners and ferry me around. When I got home, the accounting department thought I had a typo on the expense report. "You have a decimal place wrong." Uh, no. I was worried that I was in trouble, but my boss told me I had done the right thing. I had gotten to the class in time. Then I got a call to meet with Mike, my boss's boss.
The next day I sat down with Mike in his office. I thought I would get chewed out - but instead he congratulated me. "I think you did the right thing. And you didn't have anyone to ask, did you? So you did the best you could, and I'm sure you learned something. Nothing good can happen unless we try things, and not everything works out," he said.
Then he turned to his bookcase, and reached to the bottom shelf, where there were a bunch of copies of the same book. He slid one out and handed it to me.
"Read this. You can't have great successes without your share of mistakes." I looked at the cover. "How to Lose $100,000,000 and Other Valuable Advice" was the title. I put it in my bookcase and didn't pull it out until, oh, more than 20 years later.
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