Shit, I did dispatching for a tow truck company for a while.
There was always tons of calls coming in, and we only ran two trucks. Sometimes if someone wasn't desparate, just needed to get a tow to a shop from their house, I could put it off. Maybe get them to leave the keys with the car.
One day, a call from a person who had used us all the time called, and set his call up for anytime within two days. It had to be within two days. This guy was a great customer, we always charged him way too much, and he came crawling back for more abuse. Some weeks, we would only hear from just him. He owned alot of antique cars that were constantly getting work done so some weeks when it was dead, he paid my paycheck. The only problem was he was farrrrr away from town. So it would really screw us if he called when we were busy and couldn't put it off for a while.
Well, homie set up the call, and called within a day to cancel the call, he was going to wait to get the work done. I totally forgot about him cancelling, and on the second day we would have picked him up, (if he hadn't have cancelled his call) we were swamped. I put off some other pretty-important customers to take care of this guy because he was faithful.
So i send my guy off on a call that was going to take way too long. We continued to get more busy, more busy, more busy, and then some more. Then I realize that he cancelled.......FUCK! Then my driver sent me a message over the satelite system we use, saying there is no car, there is no dude, and there definitely is no keys. Then I look at all of my calls, and realize we were fucked.
We lost three customers that brought us alot of cash, two which I got back, one which we had been trying to lose. It took at least 2 weeks to get those customers back that we had wanted pretty bad. I got bitched at for two weeks from my boss, and feared getting fired the entire time. It was great we got them back, but that fucking 2 weeks blew ass, and worried my "family" at the time.
It doesn't sound too big a deal, but when you're raising a kid and have a woman, you feel like you've lost your manhood.