My wife and I few in from JFK last December en route to NCL for Christmas. We had a choice of a 1 hour 10 minute connection at LHR or an 11 hour connection (on the basis that at the time there were only two BA flights a day to NCL) so we took the former, totally legal, connection. We landed early - but then ended up on a remote stand with no one to operate the steps, delays for buses, long queues and no e-gates at immigration , slow security etc. What should have been a brisk but perfectly reasonable connection became a mad, stressful dash through the airport to our connecting gate - only for BA to then delay the flight for an hour to allow other connecting passengers to make the flight. Rewind a couple of years prior and we were in a similar situation but with a three hour delay on our inbound from LAS where BA decided *not* to hold the last NCL flight and so we ended up landside at LHR, getting BA to protect our return flights so we could then head to Kings Cross to take the train north. My wife and I could have flown the following day but our teenage daughter had been rebooked for after the Christmas holiday. We clearly weren't going to leave her behind.
For those of us who travel a lot this is all second nature. We have a good idea of how to cope in these situations, what the options and alternatives might be, who to speak to, how to phrase things and use the correct terminology - but also when to realise that the best option is to take matters into one's own hands whether that be to rebook on a different airline, get a hotel, take the train etc. and then deal with BA at a later date. However, not everyone has the experience or the knowledge or the capacity to make those, often spur of the moment, decisions. It's particularly challenging if you're in an unfamiliar city, or don't speak the language fluently etc. For me, working out the logistics of ditching BA and taking the train to Newcastle was second nature: HEX to Paddington, tube to Kings Cross, LNER (or whoever it was at the time) to NCL. However, there were other passengers in the same queue as us for the BA desks for whom the thought of taking the train had never crossed their minds, was something they had no idea how to do, how to get to the station, how to book tickets etc. I know this sounds crazy but for a lot of people, especially here in the USA, they have never ever been on a train or a bus!
I think it's all too easy to look at the frequent IRROPS induced postings that we see on this forum and look at it from the benefit of our armchair, through our eyes, based on our experiences. I think at times we need to take a step back, step into the OP's shoes, and try and see things from their perspective, showing a little more empathy (and sympathy) with their situation at the precise moment they were in it. Last week was precisely that - last week. The here and now, the present is what the OP was trying to deal with.