When I was traveling regularly for business, I toyed with the idea of writing a book called Road Warriors. It would be a collection of essays about business travel gone hilariously wrong. We all had stories and usually shared them over dinner or while waiting in airports. They were funny upon the retelling; they were rarely funny while they were happening. So, in an effort to speed up the “funny” associated with this story, I am writing it down and sharing it with you.
It all began innocently enough at 4 am on Saturday March 19th. Although, really, does anything begin innocently at 4 am? Trish and I had just wound up a glorious two weeks trekking around Utah with friends, visiting the Big Five National Parks there, a National Monument, three state parks, and finding a really excellent Sports Bar we went to for dinner two nights in a row (more on that next time). This was the trip we were supposed to do in March of 2020, just as COVID hit. It was something of a redemption trip. Getting our lives back to some sort of normal. We couldn’t have asked for a better time! We had excellent weather. The Parks were breathtaking. We were happy and exhausted and ready to come home.
My alarm woke me at 4 am, which should have been my first clue. I never sleep until the alarm. I am always so nervous that I will oversleep that I wake up every 15 minutes all night, checking the time, and then usually get up 15-30 minutes before the alarm. I staggered to the hotel bathroom and took a shower. I had gotten dressed and was checking my phone when Trish got out of the shower and I saw a text from United. Our 7 am flight from Salt Lake City to Denver had some ill-defined technical issue and was delayed. Until approximately 4 pm. No indication that any further connection to Philly was forthcoming. Ugh. I sat in stunned and tired silence for a minute gathering my thoughts and trying not to cry. Trish heard my “Oh no,” and waited with bated breath for me to explain. We decided to go to the airport anyway and find some other way to get home. And thus the odyssey began.
I put in my AirPods, called United, and began the On Hold journey. As we piled into the shuttle to the airport at 5 am, I apologized to the other passengers in case I actually got a human and started either yelling or crying or both. We got into the reticketing line by 5:15 am. There were only maybe six groups before us. This shouldn’t take long. Meanwhile, I did get a live person on the phone. Let me say right now that any ranting I do in this essay is not addressed to the good customer care people at United. They were, to a person, very nice and patient and, except for one fool, competent. There is only so much you can do when a system is entirely messed up and you have limited freedom to take any action. I spent an hour and a half on the phone with this woman, mostly listening to the United theme song on hold. That jingle now makes me twitch uncontrollably when I hear it.
There is just no slack in airline schedules these days. None. A flight gets cancelled and you have very few options. Every flight is full. Especially when you are trying to leave Salt Lake City during spring skiing season. I am all for airlines making money since a profitable airline should be a safe airline, right? And I do know that right now, United is losing money. At least what they officially report. I also know United bought back over $500 million in stock last year and over $2 billion in stock in 2020. And their executives were showered with millions upon millions in bonuses. But, hey, filling every seat means reducing Average Cost Per Seat Mile, so why leave any slack? I’ll tell you why not. Because some version of Catbert the Evil Finance manager has calculated that dealing with the occasional irate customer is cheaper than being able to get a replacement plane to Salt Lake City. Well, this irate customer has a blog and a Twitter account, @united.
It took that hour and a half on the phone to come up with this plan: fly from Salt Lake City to San Francisco; sit for four hours; fly from San Fran to LA; sit for another four hours; take a red eye to Newark; figure out how to get from Newark to Philly on your own, loser. I chose to put that plan on hold since, hey, we were only four groups from the counter now and how long can THAT take? I can see that this essay will be 5000 words if I relate every detail of this story, but suffice it to say that the natives were getting restless and complete strangers started to plot together on how to get rid of the crazy lady in the white jacket who had been at the counter for—I’m serious—three solid hours. There was literally a round of applause when she finished. Ron at the counter did his almighty best for us but all he could do was confirm the above itinerary and off we went. Slowly. We had nothing but time. With all that extra time, I kept trying to make something happen. No one seemed to be able to upgrade us further than Economy Plus (which is as much as an improvement as it sounds) without the CEO signing off. Each person I talked with sent me to someone else who “may have that power”. Never mind that we counted six pilots sitting in First Class on our flight to LA. I’m all for happy pilots, but not when I’m shoved in next to someone who hasn’t showered in a week and plays incessantly with his AirPod charging case.
The good thing about Trish and me is that we rarely melt down at the same time. At least, it hasn’t happened yet, or if it has the trauma has wiped it from memory. For the next 24 hours, we took turns melting down. We kind of hate people to begin with and there were a lot of people on this journey. We made an unspoken agreement to suspend our rules of trying not to judge other people (ok, it’s my rule, and I’ve been struggling mightily with an essay about that anyway) and we amused ourselves with a running commentary on the idiocy of pretty much every person who crossed our path. Why can’t people use headphones? I don’t need to hear the music with your TikTok videos, nor listen to you on speaker phone talking about what Joey did to Ricardo or your Aunt’s gall bladder. What saved us from disaster was an episode of the My Favorite Murder podcast, which distracted us for that last hour of waiting in LA. (Thank you, Beth, for turning us into Murderinos.) Fortunately, all those flights went smoothly (no fights over face masks or kicking the seat) and we touched down in Newark at 5 am Sunday. Even more fortunately, we were able to arrange a ride home. You’ll also be happy to know that our bags made it to Newark Saturday night. They were able to send the bags ahead, just not us. Had I known, I would have stuffed Trish into a duffle. She prefers the cold anyway.
Here are my takeaway thoughts on this whole fiasco. Flying is a pain in the ass, but we all knew that already. Airline companies have taken all the joy, along with our legroom, out of the process. Even the elite flyers, who get all the perks, look as angry and disgusted as the rest of us. They cram more and more people onto planes and their process for dealing with disruptions involves more pain for the customer. Customer-facing employees with the airlines, however, are almost always good people trying to do their best in the face of a system stacked against both them and us and with almost no freedom to act. Treat them with kindness. They display a degree of patience that we don’t deserve. I wonder if the airlines are handing out Xanax behind the counter. And, finally, people in general have forgotten what it means to be out in public. I miss common courtesy. My advice it to just put on your headphones to block them out. Take a deep breath. And, when in doubt, listen to murder podcasts.