I was packing my bags for a red-eye to Mumbai when my wife said she'd like me to carry a couple of "small packets" for her clients in the city. "You can leave them with the concierge," she explained. It didn't seem a big deal till she handed over a very large bag that weighed more than my baggage allowance, and the attendant at the check-in said rude things about the size of my case, and I had to fork out a fortune for the extra baggage that I knew from experience I wouldn't be able to claim from my wife.
When I landed in Mumbai, she messaged to say she would be grateful if I could make a small detour for an urgent delivery, so I rescheduled an appointment. Seeing how I was in the neighbourhood, my wife suggested a couple more pit stops so that she wouldn't have to worry about too many pick-ups from the hotel, and I cancelled two meetings and ended up annoying an associate who promised never to do business with me again.
I had planned to go straight to work, but she insisted I stop by at the hotel first so that she could phone her contacts to begin taking delivery. I did as advised, then had to wait in the room because a particularly fussy client wanted to check the contents of her package before taking delivery. "She'll be along in just a bit," my wife confirmed, so I waited for her to turn up. An hour later, the client called to say that since my my office was on her route, it would make more sense for everyone concerned if we met there instead of at the hotel. Unfortunately, she forgot to mention the change in rendezvous to her chauffeur, so by the time I got to work, she'd arrived at the hotel and was really annoyed about it. I returned to the hotel to make the delivery, which meant I could no longer have lunch with a guest and ended up eating a sandwich in the taxi instead.
At the hotel, the concierge gave a wrong packet to someone, and my wife called to ask whether I could do anything without messing things up, and what was I going to do to redress the situation. I went back to the hotel, picked up the right packet to hand to take to the annoyed recipient, by which time the claimant of the other packet had come to the hotel and expressed her irritation about the waste of her time. I placated her by saying I'd drop it off at her home at a time of her convenience, which happened to be right then, so I cancelled all interviews for the afternoon to hand-deliver all other packages as well.
In the evening, I felt I'd earned a glass of wine, when my wife called to ask what I was doing. I told her that I hadn't been able to get any work done and would need to stay another day to make up for it. "You really ought to be better organised, darling," she reproached me. And added that since I was in Mumbai, she knew could count on me to pick up a couple of packets to bring back to Delhi. She could arrange for them to be left with the concierge, but seeing how I'd made a mess of the deliveries, she'd breathe easier if I collected them personally, "it'll only mean a couple of quick trips in between your meetings".
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