“It Ruined My Vacation!”

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Have you ever heard this expression:  “It ruined my vacation!”?  I see it all the time online on travel forums and review sites.  Whenever I read that statement, I roll my eyes.  Why?  Because 80% of the time, the person who wrote it is being a drama queen blowing some minor incident out of all proportion.  You know, things like: The wallpaper peeling in one little corner of the bathroom behind the door where no one can see it, or a small hole in the sheet on the bed, or a waitress who never came back to the table to refill the water glasses, or the fact that one of the 10 or so attractions they wanted to see wasn’t open the day they went. . . Ruined their whole vacation!!!

Most recently, I saw this paragraph in the unfortunate story about the woman who got peed on by a drunk guy sitting next to her on a plane:

U.S. Attorney Edward Kubo Jr. says the woman said her entire vacation was ruined, and she continues to suffer emotionally from the incident. (Associated Press)

I laughed when I read this.  Not because it’s funny that this poor woman got peed on, but by her overreaction to it (and the overreaction of the authorities!). First of all, talk about a waste of taxpayer dollars, pulling in the FBI to investigate what is obviously a simple case of a guy being so drunk he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.  Aren’t the FBI needed for more important matters, like investigating murderers and terrorists?

And as for this woman…Her “entire vacation was ruined” because some guy peed on her on the plane?   She “continues to suffer emotionally from the incident”?  Really???

I’m not trying to minimize what happened to her.  Is it gross and disgusting that this guy peed on her?  Of course it is!  Would I be upset if it happened to me? Of course I would!  And I hope the guy gets some bad karma in the form of a full strip search next time he flies.  But anyone who lets a single incident like that stay with them and ruin their whole vacation has only themselves to blame.

That’s the kind of thing that, once you’ve had a chance to shower and change your clothes and tell everyone within earshot what happened to you, you move on with your life.  Maybe it ruins your day, but not your whole vacation.  There’s no long term harm here.  This woman has a really funny story to tell people now.  She’ll be the life of every party she ever goes to.  Assuming she has any kind of sense of humor, that is.

Certainly, there are things that will ruin a vacation:  Serious illness, losing all your money, being in a country when war breaks out, having a natural disaster (like a tsunami, earthquake, or a force 5 hurricane) strike your vacation destination, being in a terrible accident, and being a victim of a violent crime are just a few of them.  But letting a bad hotel room or bad service at a restaurant or a single unpleasant incident ruin your entire vacation is no one’s fault but your own.

Take the bad hotel room.   If you get to your hotel room and you’re not happy with it, you should immediately go back to the front desk and ask nicely but firmly for a better room, outlining the reasons why the one you were given wasn’t satisfactory. Nine times out of ten, they will move you to a different room without batting an eye.  And if they won’t find a better room for you, then you need to find one yourself–at a different hotel. You may be hit with a penalty for early checkout, but so what?  This is your vacation that’s at stake.  If you know that horrible room is going to ruin your vacation, why would you stay in it?

My advice is to look at a negative incident in the proper perspective.  Is there a way for you or someone else to fix the situation before your vacation is over?  Then make that happen.  If not, ask yourself where on the scale of catastrophes it lies–1 being a hangnail and 10 being a tsunami that wipes out the island you’re vacationing on.  Anything less than a 7 should not be allowed by you to ruin your vacation.  Put it aside and move on with the process of having fun.

The upshot is, are you the kind of person who has to have everything be 100% perfect in order to be happy, or can you roll with the punches?  If you ever plan to travel, you need to be able to roll with the punches, because things aren’t always going to be 100% perfect.  When things go wrong, they teach you resilience–and to do things differently next time. They give you good stories to tell your friends and family back home.  Isn’t that part of why we travel to begin with?

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