I heard a lovely, true story late last year about a disastrous long haul flight. The disaster happened at Heathrow long before the flight took off. Looooooong before. The flight took off many, many hours late.
It was a horrible experience for the person telling me the story, but here's the lovely bit: he was polite, but assertive, with the airport staff and they found a hotel for him and his family; the people who were shouty arseholes and blatantly rude and unpleasant to the ground staff (you know the sort) didn't get a hotel.
This story reminds me of two the rules I try to live by:
1. Never be rude to your waiter or waitress: they spit, or worse, in your soup.
2. Just in case, never drink yellow soup.
