Trip To Parents And The People example essay topic

"Spring Break Frustration" Senior year Spring Break was something that most people look forward too, myself being no exception. The school year began and talk of Spring Break was one of the main topics early in the year. I knew many people that wanted to go, but no one was really getting anything together in order for the trip to work out. Junior year I went to South Padre Island for Spring Break with a few of my good friends and I knew what had to be done to organize the trip so I took it upon myself to gather information. I called various company's and received an amazing amount of flyers and information including all of the possible options. I chose the company that had the best offers and a good reputation.

I phoned the Better Business Bureau to make sure that the company was legit. As soon as I did all the research that I possibly could I brought the idea up to people at school and decided to hold a meeting explaining the trip to parents and the people that wanted to go. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The girls that showed up to the meeting had many questions and I did my best to answer anything they asked.

I tried to reassure parents about their concerns. I explained how much the trip would cost and when payments would be due. I explained that I needed to know rather quickly who was going in order to reserve our spot with the company. After the meeting, it was my understanding that 10 girls would be going on the trip and we would be getting one large condo. The next day at school people found out I was organizing a trip and began asking questions. I had been informed through the company that I could earn a free trip if I was able to get 15 people to go.

Well by the end of the day, there was about 30 people that said they wanted to go which meant I had to do some rearranging of the rooming situations and a lot more planning. The first payment was the easiest part. I sent out flyers to all of the people that had signed up with a deadline of a $100 down payment. People went out of their way to get their payments to me. I also needed to collect consent forms and insurance forms from everyone, and that was a bit more difficult. People didn't fill things out correctly, minors didn't get their parents to sign, or they just plain forgot the forms with their payment.

I wanted everything to go smoothly so I tried not to let small things get in the way. I finally got all of the payments and redid the rooms the way that I thought they would work out best. I phoned the company and reserved our spots. I was extremely excited because I would be receiving my trip free and earning a commission of $500.00.

I thought all of the work would be worth it. Things started to go downhill about a month after the down payment was due. A few people had put stop payments on their first checks because they had decided to go to Cancun instead. I was not aware of this until I got the first bill from the Travel Agency. I now had to rearrange the rooms yet again. This time people were unhappy with the changes.

They were complaining to me because some people were staying with each other that did not originally plan on staying together. There was not a whole lot I could do if the price was going to stay the same. I did my best and hoped people would appreciate what I was doing. On the day that I had set to collect the second payment a chain reaction of cancellations began. By the end of the day, only 14 people were signed up to go. This created a large problem for me because I now had to pay for my trip, which was something I had not planned for.

I was scraping for money. I could do nothing but laugh at how ironic it would be if I planned the whole trip but ended up not being able to go. I managed to pay what I had to and send the payments in. There was only one payment left and I wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore, so I thought.

The final payment went almost smooth. I collected the checks from everyone, but came to find that several of them were made out to me. This meant that I had to deposit them and then write a check from my bank account. I did just that. Two weeks later I found that two of the checks had bounced and I then had several fees to pay. On top of this, the check that I wrote to the agency was going to bounce and a fee would be assessed there as well.

I had to go back to the people that wrote the bad checks and get there money again, money orders of course. I also asked that they pay the fees. One girl argued that I should have waited to cash the check because they payment wasn't due until a week later. I thought she was being out of line and I told her that. There was no way that I was going to pay for her mistake. She eventually paid me.

As soon as the mess was straightened out and I thought everything was set, the agency called me and informed me of a fuel charge the airlines were adding because of September 11th. I had to collect $25 more dollars from everyone. One parent found this to be out of the question. He took it upon himself to phone the agency and argued with our agent for hours on end.

He was not willing to pay the fee. I eventually just offered to pay the fee for his daughter. This got him to let the issue go. I was out of a little bit of money, but at least it relieved a bit of stress.

This was the last step in getting the trip together. Finally, the day was here. My frustration of planning was over, and I thought I was in the clear. We arrived safely on the island and made it to the resort relieved and anxious for our vacation to begin. Checking in was a whole new story. To my surprise, they had given our room away to someone else.

After talking to the manager I managed to get them to upgrade our room for no charge; a large condo for the six of us that were staying together would be nice. I was rooming with three guys that were best friends, and a couple that had been together for about a year. It was a strange situation. I made it to the master bedroom upstairs first and claimed it. I thought it would be best for me to room alone. Staying in a condo with three single boys was not a good idea.

They brought random girls back to the condo every night and didn't want to hang out with me because they thought that I was ruining their "game". I ended up going to the other end of the resort everyday to hang out with the girls in the other condo. The first two days were spent by the pool. The last 5 days were rainy and somewhat cold for a tropical island. It put a damper on the whole Spring Break atmosphere. About the fourth day there, I was dead tired and wanted to go to bed somewhat early.

I went up to my room at about three in the morning while the rest of my roommates were downstairs with about twenty of their "closest girlfriends". I started to get annoyed because I couldn't fall asleep with all of the noise. I went downstairs and tried to be civil but asking them to keep the commotion down to a minimum and make sure they kept an eye on all of the people that were in our condo. An argument began and I became extremely upset. There was name calling and horrible things said that no one actually meant, but it was enough to make me leave the room. I came back after about an hour of cooling off outside only to find that some of the people that were downstairs when I left the room had decided to go upstairs to my room.

I made them leave and I crawled back into bed. The noise had settled down and I thought maybe I could get some sleep. I was trying to get comfortable and felt something wet on the sheets. I got out of bed and turned on the light. Smeared all over my bed was a mixture of the grossest food you could ever think of.

My roommates had done this in revenge for me trying to make some of their friends leave. I also came to find that money had been stolen out of my suitcase. I was so angry I didn't know what I was going to do. Trust and friendships had been broken and a trip that was supposed to be a memorable experience ended up being a frustrating nightmare. I couldn't wait to leave this so called "tropical paradise". The day finally came when I got to go home.

It was all over. I could relax and forget about dealing with these people ever again. Six months of my senior year were spent in complete and utter frustration. I thank my lucky stars that it is over, and as I look back, there are so many things I would do differently to make my life a little easier. My experience was the epitome of frustration. I have never been such a nervous, stressed out mess in my entire life.

I realized that planning trips for Seniors in highschool is not something that I will ever do again. In fact, I know now that the travel industry is probably not a good choice of a career for me. I am using this experience as a sign.