My good friend Jennie (that’s Jen to you, I get to call her Jennie because I am special) was supposed to come and visit us this weekend. As you can probably tell from the fact that I am typing this out at 10:30 on a Saturday night, Jennie is not here living it up with us.
Unfortunately, we had to cancel our plans because Delta Airlines sucks… well…. sucks things that I will not type out for you in the off chance that someone like a Grandmother ends up reading this blog entry. I will leave the envisioning of the nefarious sexual escapades that Delta Airlines performs on a semi-regular basis up to you. Extra credit if there is a beverage service involved.
So, apparently Jennie’s flight got delayed because the flight coming in was late. And the flight that should have left two hours before them was still there. Everyone was delayed! It was one big party of delayedness. So, some S-M-R-T person at Delta sends one of the flight attendants that was supposed to be on Jennie’s flight a text message that the plane is going to be delayed. The flight attendant then proceeds to celebrate by not showing up at the airport at all.
Apparently you can’t just stick a bunch of people on a plane with a couple of pilots and some peanuts. You are legally required to have someone on board to show the certified idiots how to buckle their seat belts (hint, they work just like the seat belts everywhere else) and to cheerily point out where the exit aisles and flotation devices are. Theoretically they would also have to perkily inform everyone that “we are all going to die!” should such a situation arise.
Without someone to charge five bucks for headphones, the plane just can’t take off.
Jennie waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. No, Delta couldn’t put her on another flight. No, none of their partners could either. No, there were not any flights on Saturday (this was all taking place Friday night). Eventually Jennie informed the ground crew that they would be giving her a refund and, as a favor to them, she would not claw anybody’s eyes out for leaving her stranded in DC without the opportunity to be graced by the presence of her wonderful, incredible, beautiful and witty friend Hope who has flawless skin and whose hair smells vaguely like roses.
Poor Jennie.
There was more idiocy on the part of Delta (for example, they had a few seats on the 5pm flight when it went out, but no system for which lucky passengers should be given those seats. My theory is that the bored Delta employees who had been sitting around waiting for planes and missing flight attendants just wanted to see a good old fashioned melee. Who wouldn’t want to witness two business people pulling each other’s hair and smacking each other in the face with their briefcases).
The long and the short of it is that we are not to be Jennified this weekend.
Delta Airlines will know the full power of my wrath. And (shhhh), Kristian and I just might have to sneak down to DC for a weekend so that Jennie can be KristianHopeified. Except, maybe not KristianHopeified because that sounds kindof Jesus creepy.
Talking on the phone with Jennie about airlines their relative qualities of suckness reminded me of my trip to Scotland last year. Please humor me by letting me tell it.
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I was flying to Scotland to hang out with my friend James. Kristian was working in France at the time and he was going to give James and me some time to chill (I hadn’t seen James in over a year) before flying over to join us. Kristian and I were then going to fly back to France and I was going to leave from there. Damn, don’t I sound all snooty/jet-set trashy.
“Oh yes. That was the Summer that Kristian spent in Europe. Huffhuffhuff.”
But I digress (all the damn time).
All went fine for the first leg of my trip. Then I got to Manchester and I had to go through immigration. No big deal, right? Immigrations agents love me because I’m always well-behaved and polite. And, as we’ve already mentioned, there’s the flawless skin and the hair that smells of roses. I’ve never been hassled before, which is a good way of saying that I was due for this…
Well, this particular immigration agent apparently got some bad information that I had spit on his Mother and then called her some very less than polite names. I don’t know where he got that idea, but he sure as hell decided that he didn’t like me. Admittedly, I partially brought this on myself by writing down James’ phone numbers but forgetting to write down his address. So, I left the part on the form that says “UK Address” blank. Because, well, I’m an idiot and I didn’t have an address to write down.
Apparently doing something as horrible as forgetting to write down your UK address is somewhat akin to planning to move to Scotland and live in sin with a previously virtuous Scottish lad and then bilking the Scottish government out of as much cash as you can by somehow managing to live off of government assistance. Then you top it all off by kicking some puppies and bitch-slapping someone’s grandmother.
I apologized profusely. It really was stupid of my to forget James’ address. But, this immigrations agent had moved on to bigger and better things such as “why don’t you have a return ticket from Scotland” (because I have a return ticket from Geneva you idiot) and “why do you only have forty dollars in your wallet” (they’re called credit cards and I sometimes use them to buy things).
He asked me about fifty questions about my marital status and how I met James and how I met my boyfriend and who was James involved with and where was I planning on staying and how was I planning on getting to Geneva and I think that he was gearing up to ask me about what sexual positions I favored and whether or not I smoke after sex… but he probably sensed that I would have smacked him and nobody wants to be part of an international incident before lunch. Even if they do get to use a taser on American (let’s be honest, a lot of us are asking for it).
After asking me all fifty personal questions and then glaring at me, he takes James’ phone number and goes to call him. I think that he was trying to get James to slip up and admit that we were both international terrorists and freaky sexual deviants. While he’s calling James, he leaves me sitting in the little glass booth on the side where they usually put the people who they catch trying to sneak into countries that they’re not supposed to be in (but I’m an American! We go anywhere we want! We’re deciders!). Seventy percent of the flight that I just got off files past me and I can see them all elbowing each other and pointing at me. “That girl was on our flight!” “She’s wearing pink shoes! I should have known!” “I gave her my extra dinner roll because they didn’t have a vegetarian meal for her! Had I known that she was a sexual-deviant/international terrorist I never would have shared!”
Well, mister stick-up-his-butt-immigrations-man comes back and he doesn’t look happy. James gave all the same answers to the overly personal 50 questions as me and has a valid UK address so he (mr. immigrations) won’t have the pleasure of deporting me today. Plus, when James asked to speak to me and was indignantly told that “this is not a phone for the general public!” he asked the guy to relay the message that he (James) was really sorry for the way that I was being treated. Ha! That James!
So, the guy asks me all 50 questions again. Just to make sure he can’t make me slip up and admit that the real reason that I’ve come into the Country is to shack up with James, have a bunch of kids out of wedlock and then make the government pay for it all. Then, he takes out a stamp, smacks it on my passport and gleefully tells me, “this stamp means that you will be hassled next time you come into the UK because you didn’t know your friends address and you only have forty dollars cash on you.” I can’t imagine that this guy has a very happy life if his only pleasure is in making jet-lagged girls want to cry.
After all that, I rush to my connecting flight, terrified that a) it will have left without me or b) that they will have sent a message to my gate that I am to be dragged back to America in chains with a big scarlet “A” painted on my chest. I shouldn’t have worried, because instead of secret service agents at the gate, I am merely greeted by the sight of dozens of slightly bored and frustrated travelers. My connecting flight had been delayed.
So, we all waited. And waited. And waited. There were no announcements about when we might be leaving and there was no phone at the gate that I could call James from. I didn’t want to wander off to find one because I was terrified that my plane might leave without me and I didn’t want to spend a minute more in Manchester than I had to. That immigrations agent might have decided to come after me and I seriously feared his particular brand of vigilante justice. So, I waited and trusted in James’ ability to stay calm. I hoped that he would assume that no news was good news and that I was still in the UK and not on my way to Guantanamo Bay.
Eventually, we get on the plane and, as we’re taking off, the pilot comes on the intercom and lets us know that they are sorry for the delay but that there was really nothing that they could do about it as the plane was struck by lightning as it was on its way to Manchester. Nothing makes a nervous flyer such as myself as happy when they discover that the plane that they are in was recently struck by lightning! Luckily I didn’t notice the scorch marks on the wing until just before we landed. I just might have peed myself right there on the plane. Note to any future pilots a vague “we were experiencing some technical difficulties” sounds a hell of a lot better than “the plane was struck by lightning.”
I finally made it to Scotland and James was overjoyed to see me and I was overjoyed to see him. Needless to say, I did not leave my boyfriend for James and a life of Sin on the UK taxpayer’s dime. We did have lunch with a Scottish MP who promised me that, if the offending stamp should cause me any future problems, he didn’t have any foreign ministers on speed dial (being a member of the Green Party and not the Conservative Party) but he did promise to bring some people and to stand outside the airport with picket signs.
So far, I haven’t had to take him up on that offer.
“They let me into their country? They must be mad! Mad, I say!”
So, what are your travel horror stories?
