Lesson

I was flying to Toronto this afternoon and got hung up because the flight out of ROA had a mechanical issue (something was wrong with the door). Since I had a tight connection, I knew I would miss the original so I called the Delta service number to check to see if there was a later flight. There was and the rep on the phone said that if I missed my original I'd be re-booked on the later flight automatically. Fine.

We get on the plane and go. We arrive over an hour late and, as expected my original flight had already left. I went over to the kiosk, scanned my boarding pass in the machine that prints out a new one if you have a missed connection and was so confident that I was on the correct flight, I just started towards the gate. Halfway up the escalator, I actually look at the time and I was on the flight tomorrow morning. Idiots. So, I have to go back down the the customer service center and wait on line. While I'm waiting, I call the Delta service number again to see what happened. Turns out, the computer automatically pushed me to the next day and she was able to put me on the later flight today. I reprinted my boarding pass and all was good. 

I learned two valuable lessons: first, always call customer service if you run into a problem while in the airport. Second, you might have to do the first thing twice to get it right.