Once, when I was a brand new flight instructor working at a school in the US, my boss told me to take one of our students up and fly around for a while. So off we went to a nearby city, with my student steering and me navigating using a sectional. We landed at the downtown heliport and, having noticed a railroadtrack along the way that paralleled our course, I put my maps away under the seat for the return flight, confident that I could find the way back. Ofcourse we promptly missed the track and veered off into the wrong direction. By the time I had realised my mistake and turned towards home, we were running low on fuel. With no airport in sight, my choice was to land in a field with twenty minutes reserve or to press on and land at the airport on fumes. With a knot in my stomach I headed for a field next to a gas station where I called my boss on the phone, expecting to be fired on the spot. His response surprised me: he just laughed and told me to stay put. In short order he arrived in a second helicopter. We transferred some fuel and completed our flight without incident. Why was my boss happy? Sure, I had made a mistake, but I did not compound one mistake with another. Had he found me at the airport with a near-empty fuel tank he most surely would have fired me.