Traveling Woman

There is nothing more frustrating than getting up extra EXTRA early to catch a flight…only to have it get delayed so much that you could’ve gotten a full night’s sleep. That’s what happened to me and my traveling compadres this past week.

My alarm went off at 3:30 am this morning – that’s not morning, people, that’s the middle of the eff-ing night – to catch a 5:45 flight to Milwaukee with a connection to Washington DC.

Due to fog in Milwaukee our flight got delayed and delayed to the point that the airline we were supposed to take booked us a direct flight on a different airline to at least get us to our final destination sometime today, though we will be arriving 3 hours later than scheduled.

You can imagine the series of changes/announcements/communication that occurred throughout the day, and I won’t bore you with all the idiosyncrasies. But I have to share one particular part of the day that I found humorous.

When, for the second time, we de-planed to re-book a flight, the gate agent was attempting to service as many people as he could from the gate so that we didn’t have to exit the secure area to go to the ticketing area and re-enter security. The line was long and there was only one agent there working the computer. We decided to divide and conquer, so my co-worker went down to the ticket counter to see if he could get help faster; if so he would call us and we’d all traipse down to get re-booked.

While I’m waiting in the obnoxiously long line at the gate, I hear the gate agent get on the phone and practically beg a co-worker to come up to help him re-book all the passengers. He finally got a confirmation that help was on the way, at which point he says, “Oh thanks man, I really appreciate it. I owe you a cup of coffee or something.”

In the meantime, I get the call from my co-worker who is now at the ticket counter, getting help from an agent right now, so I leave the long line to go to the ticket counter to get re-booked right away. The person at this particular counter was in a foul mood (did he get up at 3:30 am too??) and being a bit of a jerk to work with. He stood with one arm bracing his whole body on the counter while tapping away with one finger at the keyboard. It took an interminably long time for him to get just our tickets re-booked.

While we’re waiting for him to re-book us, his phone rings and he picks it up. He listens for a bit and then says, “Naahh man, I can’t make it there now, I got a line down here too. Sorry, wish I could help you.” He listens for a bit more, then says, “Sorry, man,” and hangs up.

So now I’ve heard both sides of the conversation – I can only imagine that the call was from the poor gate agent stuck at gate 8 with a long line of frustrated passengers, growing even more impatient. I look at the “long line” of people behind us that this guy has to still process.

There are two more people behind us.

Wow, that is quite a long line. Then again, since he’s pecking away at the keyboard with one finger, I can imagine that it will take him just as long to process these passengers as it would the agent at the gate to process the 10 he had waiting in line.