No I’m not actually shorting United. But I should. Because their customer service sucks and people cannot help but hate them.
After an impressive showing by the iBC forces in New York, it was time to depart. And so, making my way punctually to the airport, I stopped only to note that the good Gapandyap was stranded on the runway of – as misfortune would unfold – the very spot I was supposed to be taking off on.
It would seem that the TSA had, while reviewing luggage, glossed over some, and forgetting about it, placed it on their planes.
I would piece together that the TSA then rediscovered these bags and – like the dog who forgets a visitor is over, awakes suddenly to growl and bark at them – idled an entire terminal.
As the suffering men and women from this terminal were rerouted into mine, I found myself in a line twenty and two hundred in length. By the time I reached the front of it, it stretched at least four hundred bodies back.
Meanwhile, father Zeus himself had set out to disrupt our leave. In passing, I see now the error of our ways. While dining on 2 ½ inch steak, we neglected to burn the fat in his honor.
What would you do, if you were the God of freaking lightning?
Ergo, he set to destroy our Sunday evenings as meticulously as possible.
As my departure time neared, the grousing in the lines reached maximum clamor as twenty minutes left little time, most notably since we had yet to even secure our boarding passes. But then, as my fellow companions noted that “UAL has not made even an effort to get those of us who are about to miss our planes to the front of the line”, it struck me.
No they had not.
Now, surely UAL employees are not THAT stupid? Why had they not made even the slightest effort to help secure those of us who needed to leave, post haste??
As the man in front of me furious berated the clerks for their perceived ineptitude – “My flight’s about to take off, you assholes” – the cynical and cunning side of me spoke up from the back of my mind.
“Buddy, that plane ain’t going anywhere.”
As the sky road black with horizontal rain and lightning crashed through in all Zeus’ “pissed-off-ness”, every flight out of Newark, NJ, that godless house of heathens, was cancelled. And so I lay, stuck on a ship that I had not realized had struck aground hours before I even boarded it. As she sank, I dutifully played my strings, while hearing the good Ragin Cajun in the dark calling out.
Now, I will say – there was another possible title for this post I toyed with before settling on the more direct. I had thought about calling it “Nobody Likes Your Fucking Child”.
At this point, approaching the wee hours of “tomorrow”, several children began running around, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Nothing brings out black hatred like children being annoying as all hell. As I contemplated murdering one to set a point – I had the plastic bag picked out, don’t laugh – the mood darkened around me.
I don’t doubt that if I had set on one, the other stranded passengers would have no doubt moved to intervene – by forming a circle of protection around me to keep the parents from interfering while I made a clean kill.
It was not UAL’s fault, but their response was just clumsy. I watched as a nonstop slew of people marched, steadily, almost in doldrums, to launch suddenly visceral assaults on the unsuspecting terminal managers. And yet, they couldn’t figure out how to inform everyone of what was going on.
It became a joke, as every hour they announced all flights would be delayed by one more hour. To appease the angry masses, many deals for sympathy were cut at a great price. They began doling out $700 vouchers and free room and meals, to try and assuage the passenger glut that was created.
The moral of the story is: you cannot control the God of Thunder when he decides to strike your operation dead. But you can “not be a dumbass” about the situation.
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Great post Cain….
here are simple rules to live by if you have to travel
1. always print your boarding pass out in advance – you can do it at the hotel kiosk including the # of bags to check
2. Never check bags. (Unless you have to like if the wifey is with you) and use the valet at bag drop – that $5 will be worth it
3. Always look for the security line with metal detectors rather than the full body scanners if possible. Try and avoid lines with old people, kids and females in that order
When in doubt – watch everything George Clooney does in “Up in the Air” and do that
I kept asking, “Where’s John Candy? Why isn’t he offering to save me by catching a ride in the van of a Milwauke trombone band?”
But John Candy never came.
almost every airline is like this. and they all bleed cash.
Almost every DOMESTIC airline is like that. Please don’t lump the fine folks of Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, etc. in with your sorry lot.
Are you still overseas, Po?
Fly allowed you to travel by plane?
I would think that a balloon (with mobile wi-fi hotspot, of course) would have been the way to go. It is nigh impossible to travel by plane without getting your top hat crushed at some point.
It is vital to have adequate champagne on board the balloon, to toast each other’s final moments if you run into a violent strom.
Hahaha treu, gentlemen travel by the gentle methods.
Next year I simply must travel by balloon to Buffalo; then on horseback to Newark.
Then a brief pace on a penny-farthing into Manhattan.
Next year you shall travel by zeppelin then calash.
There’s only one airline worse than United, and it’s AMERICAN AIRWAYS. I don’t even know if someone else owns it now, as I don’t follow airlines for shit, but AA is THE WORST I have ever flown.
They lose your luggage about every other flight.
Good post Cain!