Some Risks Just Aren’t Worth Taking (in Business and Life)

I did something incredibly stupid last night.

I almost can’t believe did it, not because I don’t make stupid mistakes but because the one I’m about to tell you about had such an easy solution.

After spending most of the day at home, my wife and I decided to take the kids to Rockin’ Jump, a trampoline park not far from our house. This time my wife even wanted to jump with the kids, which we don’t usually do.

It started out amazing, all of us jumping together and working up a sweat. I even decided to try my hand at the foam pit. If you’ve never been to one of these places, the foam pit is filled with foam cushions. What I didn’t realize is just how deep it is.

After jumping in and landing on my back, I could barely get out. I nearly lost my glasses in the process, but I got out, dusted myself off and everything felt all good. Except it wasn’t.

You see in my haste to avoid the mass of people at the lockers, I figured I would just hold everything close with no problem. When I say everything, specifically I decided to jump with my wallet, my new phone, the keys to my wife’s car (that we drove there), and the keys to my car.

Imagine my surprise when 30 minutes after hitting the foam pit, I realized I didn’t have the keys to our car.

At this point, I went to the front desk and begged them to let me try to find the keys in the pit (about 5-6 ft deep by the way). They humored me, all the while knowing I had no chance of finding them. After about 10 minutes of me helplessly trying to get to the bottom of this pit, my wife told me to give it up and call a cab to go get our other car since we had no car seats.

He good news? The lost key only had the car key on it, and I still had a key to my car. The bad news? My house key was still in the house since I always come in through the garage…and my car was parked in the garage. Oh and my wife left her purse at home because she didn’t want to deal with a locker (I knew before we left).

For those keeping score, that means all of our house keys and the one car I had a key to were all locked inside the house.

Pretty sweet, right?

I called my landlord and he graciously agreed to drop what he was doing to come over and let me in so I could grab my wife’s keys and take my car to bring them to her. He didn’t even charge me.

So two hours after originally planned, we were all headed home…except in two different cars.

Why should you care about this?

Because it serves as an important reminder to make decisions with the cost-benefit relationship in mind. Calculated risks are the only risks worth taking. Just like with my situation yesterday, shortcuts often bite you in the backside (hard) in the end.

To quote Rob Lowe, “don’t be like this me.”