Air travel in America has become such an ordeal.....you have to remove your shoes, limit your carry-on bags, store your liquids in a Ziploc baggie and they have to be a certain size, pay to check a suitcase. And, on top of that you have to get to the airport two hours before your departure.
My husband and I are not world travelers, yet it seems that we experience "road blocks" every time we fly. Last night we were booked on a Delta flight from Wilmington, NC to Chicago with a stop for a connecting flight in Atlanta, GA. We arrived at the Wilmington airport in plenty of time to check in and go through security. We didn't check bags because we packed our clothes for four days into a small duffel bag like Italians casing homemade sausage.
We thought we had the right size toothpaste, but the "toiletry police" gave us the option of checking our paste or throwing it away. After rolling up our pants and underwear like perm rods from the eighties, I didn't think it would be prudent to "check" the toothpaste, but now that I think about it, I should have told the woman that "Yes, would you please put my two ounce tube of toothpaste in the baggage area underneath the plane and I will pick it up in Chicago." Now that would have been funny! I will have to try that next time.
OK, so we get through all the procedures and we waited for our plane to board. It was raining and overcast in Wilmington and our flight was delayed about thirty minutes. That meant we didn't arrive in Atlanta on time, but we thought that our connecting flight would be delayed too since it was raining there as well. Or, we hoped that the plane might be held for the dozen or so passengers that had to get to Chicago.
NOT!
We got to the gate and the plane was there, but Delta had closed the door already. They said we would have to fly standby on the next flight which was also the last one out that night. If we didn't make that one, we would have to spend the night in Atlanta and fly out the next day.
"We have five kids," we told the Delta people at the gate. They didn't really care about that. They told us to go to their customer service counter and take it up with them.
We joined thirty or so other disgruntled Delta customers at the counter and waited our turn to talk to a customer service agent. They had a live person with a half moon smile and starry eyes at the end of the line who pointed to a roped off area that reminded me of the zig and zag lines at Disney World. This half moon smiley person said we would have to pick up one of the 40 phones behind her and wait for the next available operator (who I was sure would be in a land far far away).
I waited in line, picked up the phone, and waited about fifteen minutes longer until a customer service agent picked up the phone. I told her that my husband and I NEEDED to get to Chicago that night and not the next day because we have five minor children at home and (She cut me off mid-sentence, which didn't make me feel very warm and sunshiney inside). She said that I would be on stand-by with the other Chicago bound passengers on a fully booked flight. She couldn't guarantee me a seat on that flight, but I would have a confirmed seat on a flight out the next day at 10:30 a.m. (Which did me no good whatsoever).
I tried to tell her again about our orphaned children at home......(she kept talking). I asked her if she had ever seen the movie "Home Alone?"
"Do you know who Macaulay Culkin is? Do you want to be responsible for that?" The woman kept repeating the same thing over and over as if she were a recording about no seats on the flight and standby and tomorrow at 10:30.
Now I was ticked. Not only was I stuck in Atlanta when I started out in North Carolina and why in the world Delta would fly us south to go north was beyond my ability to comprehend, but now this woman was totally ignoring my dilemma.
I asked her how she could listen to me when she was doing all the talking. She kept talking. I asked again, only a bit louder. She kept repeating herself. I asked one more time and this time I was determined to be heard and I blurted out all the frustrations of the day and how it was the responsibility of the airline to make sure that their connecting flight information is supplied to their employees (our flight attendant said he had no information on our connecting flight) and that they had a duty to get their paying customers from point A to point B on time and that there was no reason for them to let that plane leave 120 seconds before the dozen passengers from their own connecting flight were able to get there.
She hung up on me.
UGH! My husband was standing near me and three other dissatisfied Delta customers were giving him the thumbs up and saying, "Yeah, we agree with everything she just said."
I was feeling slightly embarrassed and definitely like Delta still had not heard me out. I wish people who work in customer service would realize that LISTENING is a skill that can be learned. The problem may still be there, but when you listen to the one who has it, at least they have the satisfaction of knowing that they have been heard.
Well, we made our flight. We were the last two people to board and they shut the door leaving seven other Chicagoans in Atlanta for the night. I was happy for us, but I really felt bad for them.
Next time, I'm driving!
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