The Long Drive

My Microsoft colleague Terry Smith recounts a humorous tale about superfluous travel. He had a meeting in Bristol with a customer which he struggled to get to driving from his home in Warwick about 3 hours away. He finally arrived in a rush and quite stressed, but the reception told him that he could relax as the person he was meeting had not yet arrived to the office. A short while later, the customer came rushing through the doors, saw Terry and quick apologised, ‘I so sorry…I hit so much traffic coming down from Warwick.” It turns out both of them lived a few miles away from each other, but had arranged for the meeting at the customer’s ‘office’ by default and as a result both had driven for 3 hours (and lots of stress further aggravating already snarled traffic) when they could have had a pint at the local pub saving nearly two days worth of driving and a proportionate amount of petrol consumption and CO2 emission.