A guy walks up to the check-in counter at the Toronto airport and says to the attendant “Good morning! Could I check in for the flight to Winnipeg and send my suitcase to Cancun?” Although a bit surprised by the request, the woman behind the counter politely replies, “Sorry sir. I can certainly check you in on your flight to Winnipeg, but your suitcase will have to go with you. I can’t send your suitcase to Cancun.” The gentleman smiles and replies “But you did it last time!”

I wish I could tell you that this is just a funny story, which it is. However, sadly, it is based on real experience. My family, including myself, my husband and 3 children, recently traveled from Toronto to Winnipeg. In general, I travel more relaxed on domestic flights, with no borders to cross or customs to cross. Things usually go quite well with some delay or flight cancellation.

The morning of our flight to Winnipeg I checked my email and found that the flight was delayed about an hour, not a big deal. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare.

Anyone who has traveled recently knows how much things have changed in recent years. Most of the process is now delegated to the “customer”. I’m looking forward to the day someone tells me I have to fly the plane myself!

Anyway, I checked in all of us online the night before and printed out all the boarding passes. When we got to the airport, I used the self-service terminal to print our luggage tags and we applied them ourselves. Honestly, there wasn’t much left to do for the airport staff. We quickly went through the baggage check line and delivered the 5 bags together. Later we boarded the plane and approximately 2-1 / 2 hours later we landed in Winnipeg. So far so good.

Winnipeg recently built a new high-tech airport. We proceeded to reclaim the luggage and we located ourselves near where the bags were leaving the carousel.

Four of our bags showed up pretty quickly. Then we wait. My son, who often takes opportunities to tease his little sister, jokingly said, “Your bag went to Cancun!” We really thought it was a joke at the time, but when we saw the flash of light indicating that there were no more bags to go on, we began to wonder what happened to the missing suitcase.

To make a long story short, we ended up filing a “lost bag” report and left the airport with 4 out of 5 bags. My 10 year old daughter was upset, but she actually handled the situation very well. I was thankful that the lost suitcase was hers and not my 17-year-old daughter or my husband! It wasn’t until late that night that we found out that her suitcase was sent to Cancun! They told us he would be on a plane to Toronto the next morning and then en route to Winnipeg. We could pick it up or arrange to have it delivered to the place where we were staying.

In our conversations that day, I remembered sending my mom a package from Toronto to Winnipeg and it somehow ended up in Halifax! The next day we did not receive any phone calls. I followed up late in the morning and they told me the bag didn’t make it to Toronto or Winnipeg. At the time they didn’t know where it was … It wasn’t until 6:30 pm on our second day that we were told that the suitcase was finally located in Halifax!

They assured me that it would be shipped to Toronto the next day and then to Winnipeg. At this point I didn’t know what to believe, but we all agreed not to talk about further travel destinations! Fortunately, we received a call the next day that the suitcase was at the Winnipeg airport. We arranged for it to be delivered to the cabin we were staying in about 1 hour and a half outside of Winnipeg. That night we had the suitcase.

This incident got me thinking. How could something like this happen in today’s age of technology?

There is no doubt that technology has improved our lives in many ways and has automated many routine processes. However, it still has its limitations. If humans are involved, so is human error. At some point along the way, my daughter’s suitcase was handled by a human and was lost even though it was clearly tagged with an electronically generated luggage tag displaying the Winnipeg airport code.

You will often hear people say “I’m only human. I make mistakes.” That is precisely the reason why we still have the need to verify our work. To some extent, technology has made us careless. It has given us a false sense of security and we forget that we are only using tools.

A spell checker is a perfect example. It is limited in the errors it can detect.

I can remember years ago when I used to write essays on an electric typewriter. I was very careful not to make a mistake, knowing that that meant I would have to erase and rewrite any mistakes. If he erased too much, it would make a hole in the paper or a smudge, which meant he would have to rewrite the entire page. If there was carbon paper in the middle (to make a copy), the problem was made even worse! We’ve come a long way with computers and keyboards, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve become a careless typist and have come to rely heavily on the “Backspace” and “Delete” keys.

One thing that I have learned over the years is the importance of verifying my work. Be it a detailed document or a short email, I usually reread what I write several times before sending it.

Technology has made it easy for us to relax and make mistakes. In the suitcase example, mistakes resulted in torts, annoyances, and loss of money and time. Fortunately, these errors were relatively small and had temporary effects.

However, too often, mistakes lead to costly and sometimes devastating results.

Technology has its limitations. Take a few more minutes and check again!