Saturday night, the Plus3 Ireland group was getting all ready to board our second flight towards our final destination. As it was storming in Charlotte, North Carolina, flights around us kept getting cancelled and delayed, ours eventually being one of them. Our flight kept getting pushed back until as late as 11:45 pm, only to end up getting cancelled in the end, leaving us with 3 extra days in Charlotte, wondering what to do.

With the extra days we have in Charlotte, our group has tried to make the most of it. Yesterday, we made the most of our day by walking around downtown Charlotte for lunch, going to TopGolf, and ending the night with ice cream. As business students, we can see the business side in all of this. Businesses like TopGolf and Jeni’s Ice Cream are successful because of specific business functions they excel in. For example, the marketing at Jeni’s Ice Cream is what drew us in. When looking online for Ice Cream places near us, their website was bright and colorful and mentioned many of their unique flavors. When we got there, their sign outside was bright and colorful like their website and there was a cute ice cream bar outside. Inside was just as cute and smelled delicious. Overall, it was a great and delicious experience.

Our experience at TopGolf was also a fun and successful time. We split into 3 groups into our own bays to play. TopGolf also has great marketing functions, but one thing that stood out to me during our time there was their information technology. We all put our names into the computer screen and took turns hitting the golf balls. The coolest part about it was that there were sensors in the golf balls to track where it went to keep track of the points each player got. I thought that was really neat and made the experience more interesting.

Although we had successful experiences with these organizations, I cannot say the same for American Airlines on Saturday. Two business skills they seemed to be lacking were communication and customer service. While waiting at the gate, which was switched three different times, they were not making any announcements about what was going on and kept saying completely different things than the American Airlines application was stating about the flight. When the flight eventually got cancelled, we learned from the app and other people sitting around us. The American Airlines workers at the gate never announced it, leaving some people just waiting there. Our advisors thought it was best to get out of there and get a hotel to rest before figuring out our next plan, but they ended up staying up most of the night on hold with American Airlines. The airline also continued to say we could not get our luggage back even though we would not be back in the airport for another 3 days. Thankfully though, we ended up getting our luggage back yesterday.

So far, I feel like we have experienced a lot without even making it to Dublin yet. I have learned a couple things about myself too. I have realized that I cannot be mad and upset about things I can’t control myself, like the weather, and that these type of things are bound to happen when traveling. Lastly, I learned to make the most of my time in situations like this one. I feel like I have already made friends and memories without even leaving the country yet. Our group as a whole has kept positive attitudes throughout this and are making the most out of our extra time spent in Charlotte. This is not how we expected our trip to start out, but everything happens for a reason.