Nearly Lost the Company Mobile

I was sent to a conference after being with the company for just a month (that's about three years ago now). It was an exciting opportunity - place I've never been, all expenses paid, time away from office without using vacation, upscale hotel I'd never normally stay in, cocktail hour each evening with all the free alcohol I can handle - what's not to be excited about???

It didn't start on a high note.

Plan: Drive one hour to airport. Get on plane and fly to Chicago. Transfer flights; get on another plane to Indianapolis. Get on shuttle to travel to upscale hotel an hour or so away from airport. Arrive at upscale hotel same day. Take the evening to lounge & enjoy the luxury.

Actual Events: Drive one hour to airport. Flight delayed...wait a few hours and then get on plane and fly to Chicago. Miss transfer flight. Get assigned new flight. New flight cancelled. No more flights to Indianapolis that evening. Airline arranges for bus to take us to Indianapolis. Wait two more hours, then board bus. Arrive in Indianapolis late at night - no more shuttles available to final destination. Stay at Best Western. Next morning, catch 5:40am shuttle to destination. Hastily check in at upscale hotel and rush to Day 1 of conference.

And here's the kicker -

I had agreed to call my direct manager each afternoon to give an update on how the conference was going. After the first day of events, exhausted, I went to get the company cell phone I had been given...it was no where to be found.

Where would I have packed it? Then a memory came back to me...sleeping on the bus...feeling something bump my leg...faint tap on the floor just under me...fading back to sleep.

Shit! That was the cell phone! It must have slipped out of the tote bag on my lap!

Frantically, I started using my own phone card to make calls from the room - checking in with my manager as agreed upon, calling the airline, demanding they contact the bus company, insisting that they tell me when, specifically, I can expect them to follow up, asking for a manager, assigning blame of my loss to the airline since the flights had failed to work out.

That night, I laid in bed coming up with explanations I might offer when I return to the office...something that wouldn't make me seem too irresponsible. Maybe I could get away with claiming that I turned the phone in. When they ask why it wasn't "officially" checked in, I could feign ignorance of the proper procedure...after all, I was still new there. Yeah, that's it...and now someone else must be using it. All I know is that I put it back in it's proper place.

Would it fly?