Who tells you that? You don’t need to do that! I put my customer in the plane in the last ONE minute!
It was a one-day business trip to Cixi Ningbo. Nicolas, my boss, came from Guangzhou to visit his cap supplier in Cixi. And he was making a secret one as he told me in his mail that he didn’t notify his supplier about his visit and would like to keep that way. I picked him up at the airport and we rented a taxi at the airport to our destination. We took the highway with the highway toll paid by us.
We appeared in the eyes of the supplier before noon. We made a detailed research into the production situation and the schedule of the production and the delivery. We also went into the workshop to check and inspect what they had produced. Luckily everything went well.
Since we didn’t ask the previous taxi driver to wait for us, we had to use another one. We went to the street. 7 or 8 taxi drivers were waiting there. But none of them wanted to take us to the airport because it was already afternoon and it was a long way. They may have to drive back without passenger. Time passed minute by minute. My boss started to get anxious because if we didn’t get going soon, he would miss the last plane back to Guangzhou although he hadn’t booked the ticket and he didn’t want to book one until he was sure he was able to get on it. Finally we found one guy who wasn’t a taxi driver but had a truck. My boss made the bargain himself and agreed with it quickly. We both stressed that he must take the highway since we were running with the clock. He said ok. At first, we thought we were really on the “highway” because the road was so flat, smooth and easy. But our thoughts broke when we were being shaking heavily and we realized the truck was bumping down a rocky road. We asked “didn’t you promise to take the highway”? He said “we were on the highway, but now we are on an ordinary road”. We were really unhappy about it but we could not go back but just urged him to drive fast.
Thank god, we finally reached the suburban where the truck was banned from going through. If we continued to use the truck which had to take another long way to get to airport, my boss were definitely unable to get on the plane. So we changed to taxi. Soon enough my boss got a call from his friend that he was already at the airport and would leave in the last plane. Knowing this by boss got more and more anxious. We got no more than 50 minutes left. However it would need 45 minutes the fastest to arrive at the airport. We requested the driver to drive at full speed.
Because of the 2hours policy and in order to calm my boss down, I made call to the airport for booking. The first one was the airport reception lady, she explained they already stopped selling ticket by rule and it was out of her hand to make exception and advised me to call the flight company. The second one was the onboard lady. She said they hadn’t dealt with this matter before and they would not accept passenger anymore at this moment (20minutes ongoing). I told her how important my boss had to sit in this plane and two cars of good words. She bent and said she would check with the captain. 10 minutes before the plane took off we were still 5 minutes away from the airport. I called again to receive very good news. My boss was accepted! The minute we got to the airport, we rushed to the counter to buy ticket. The last thing we wanted to see happened. My boss didn’t have enough money. Oh, every effort we had made could go into nothing. The good news was that I took money with me and it was enough to make it up for one ticket. As he wished, my boss got onboard.
Therefore I would like to say fight to the last minute or you will never know whether you can make it. And fight with the right partner or he will make your way rougher.
on 2013-09-29 03:50:00 Tags: interpreter,assistant,guide,sourcing, supplier, travel
