We apologize for the incovenience
So, this week, I had what definitely counts as my worst experience flying.
On the flight to the head office in New Jersey, on Wednesday morning, I got to the airport a full two and a quarter hours before my plane was to leave. When I got to the customs preclearance at Pearson, and the lineup was 8 bends deep to the back wall, I knew right then and there it was going to be a long day.

Little did I know.

It turns out, that the computers were down. So they now had three line ups going at the same time. The normal lineup, for those of us who were curteous enough to show up in a reasonable amount of time.

The semi-emergency line, for people who were not quite as curteous, and were somewhat in danger of missing their flights.

Then, there was the super emergency line, of people they pulled out of the other two lines who's planes were practically taxiing down the runway, and they were going to have to rush them there in a ground crew vehicle.

To my credit, I stayed in the normal (read slowest) line until the very end. Until, in fact, nearly 20 minutes after my plane was supposed to have left, thinking, "there's one every hour, I'll just catch the next one."

So finally I snap, and put myself into the super emergency line when nobody's looking, and at that point they get the computers working, and open more than just four screening booths. So I get to security, and I'm taking off my four or five pounds of electrical gear, change, and belts, and I hear,
"This is the last call for Pasengers Blah blah, blah blah, and Allen, on flight 117 from gate 170. Please report to the podium immediately."
I look at the security guy, and say "Can you radio them or something and tell them I'm coming?" He looks at me like I just asked him to extrapolate Pi to 1000 places.

So I manage to avoid having to turn me laptop on, and get to the board where they indicate the gate, yup, it's gat 170. How far can that be? I'll tell you. About one and a half football fields. Canadian football fields. If it hadn't been for the people movers, I would have had a stroke. You have never seen anybody move so fast in leather soled dress shoes in your life.

Then I get to the gate, and the person says "Oh, it's ok, the plane's not leaving for another 10 minutes or so."

Completely spent, I find my seat on the plane, and guess what? The problems with the customs computers have sent the whole airport into a tailspin. Now because all the flights are leaving at the wrong time, the groundcrews are all scattered. So we sit on the tarmack for another hour and a half or so. Did I mention I had already spent two hours in the customs line up? No, I don't think I did.

So coming back, I'm thinking it must be better than going down.

Foolish, foolish boy.

So going back, I get to the airport, again two hours early at - yup, the single worst airport in the country. LaGuardia in New York. So I'm sitting there, and the departure lounge is buzzing, and most of the people there are using the WiFI hotspot to check the actual departure times because the screens at LaGuardia are so famously inaccurate.

Then they announce the cancellation of the Ottawa flight, and there is much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

Then they delay my flight by another hour and a half. I go get a magazine. I'm enjoying reading said magazine, when they announce that my flight, and the flight after it to Toronto, have both been cancelled.

So I get in the line to reschedule, wondering what my chances are of getting home that night, and realize, if I don't get someone at the Head Office to book me a hotel room now, I'm screwed. So a lovely young lady agrees to hold my spot in the line, and I manage through a three way call to the toll free # in Canaada to get a hotel lined up. So I've got my back up plan.

Then I get to the podium, and I'm still hopefull. Until she tells me there are only three more flights out that night, all of them are oversold, and the standby list for the second one - the second, not the first, is 114 people deep.

I head off to the Holiday Inn Hasbrouck Heights (see earlier posts for a description of that place), and prepare to try my luck in the morning.

Sooooo to make an increasingly long story a little shorter, I arrived at home this afternoon, a full 6 hours after I left my hotel. Keep in mind it's a one hour flight. One hour in the air, I guess they don't count the two more hours on the tarmac.

The burn to all of this, is that for me to drive there, is about 8 hours door to door. Next time, I'm renting a car.

Which leads me to the point of this whole sordid story. That's the magical phrase, "we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you."

There is a canadian author who's name escapes me, who has written a book with a title somewhat along the lines of "Your call is important to us, and other Bullshit companies tell us."

Just the phrase, 'We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you."

Inconvenience? Well, that's one way to put it - if you describe costing my company about another $400 in travel expenses for me, while I sat awake most of the night wondering how Noelle was going to get on with the boys on her own for another day, when it turned out that that day was the one that Isaac thought it would be good to assert his independance, and got two time outs - in his room no less - and cost himself the toy I had brought him back from Jersey (at least for two more days, we're not that mean), while Sam spent the entire day fussing from the immunization he had gotten the day before - as an inconvenience, well, yes, I guess that would be what you would call it.

Kind of the same way that the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island meltdowns were "Incidents", or the Korean War was a "Police Action." Yes, I would say it was an inconvenience.

And they whole "may have caused you." That drives me nuts. Who would NOT be inconvenienced (measured, as it may be on the richter scale) by having to sit on the runway for nearly two hours, to say nothing of having had their flight the night before cancelled.

How about "We apoligize for the utter bollocksing this is going to be to your plans." Or perhaps way more accurately, "We apoligize for taking you the customer completely for granted, but then, I guess we kind of have you by the short and curlies, here, don't we? So sit tight, and we'll figure it out as soon as there is anything even resembling competition on this route, at which point we'll start feeding you, being on time, and just generally treating you like a human being, rather than a really inconvenient breed of cattle, just like we used to do in the old days."

As Herr Brudermann is fond of saying, "I'm not commonly known as a bitter man..."
'nuff said.