Ah, flying.
Today we took the final leg of my oft-fretted over trip to Colorado (and back). We curbcheck baggage but we’re told we need seat assignments inside. Off we troop to the gate. I hand the guy all the paperwork. He does his typing, etc, and slides us back two tickets. I say “Are the three of us together?” He says: “Only two of you are traveling.” I say no, we’re all going. He snaps at me “Ma’am, I get families in here all the time. I can’t just look at you and tell you’re traveling.” Um, correct, Mr. Asswipe, but maybe if you’d read our paperwork a little more carefully? So I slide it back over to him (politely and patiently, even!) and he checks again. Then he says, with a long-suffering sigh, “Oh, you have a DIFFERENT LAST NAME?” Gee, I didn’t know I needed clearance from the FAA to keep my maiden name.
So then I ask him, again, if the seats are together. As a side note, gentle reader, I’m hoping we’ll get three together, though if we just have the standard two together that’s manageable. But he slides them over and says “This flight is full. You won’t get seats together.” We look at the seats. NONE of them are together. Okay. Fine, I understand this. You can’t accomodate everyone with a full flight. But we’re traveling with a baby under two. THE KID CANNOT SIT ALONE no matter how tempted my husband and I might be to leave him about four rows back. Furthermore, the fruit of our loins must be located in a window seat (so they’ve told me on other flights) because his child seat blocks the row. We have three seats, no two next to each other, and not a single one of them is a window seat. So we’re not just going to have to wrangle around requesting people to switch rows, we’re also going to have to locate someone who will give up a window for an aisle. Is this impossible? Well, no, but it involves us standing in the aisle blocking people with our childseat, a baby, and carryon luggage while everyone is trying to sit their asses down. It creates chaos. That lousy lazy bastard KNEW that’s what would happen, and he didn’t give a shit.
He could have readily said “I’ll try to get at least two of you together–let me locate a good prospect on my screen and page them to come to the podium to see if they’d agree to a change.” Or he could have said “Oh, I’m sorry I can’t help.” Andhe could have been somewhat gracious about the fact that he already blamed me for his own inability to read our tickets. Anything but his nasty shitty
I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass attitude.
[The happy ending to this story is that I told a flight attendant I wasn’t sure the best way to solve the problem, and could she help, and she came up with a great way to solve it fast by figuring out which of our three rows we should ask people to move out of versus into. She just sized up who was already seated and presto. We were still blocking the shit out of people but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I hated doing this, their job is not to solve our little seating problem, but she was gracious about it.]
I don’t expect to be treated like royalty on an airplane. I don’t expect privileges. I know I’m just an body filling a seat. But airline employees can at least be polite, and they can try to avert problems when they see them coming.
OR, they can pucker up and kiss my pudgy pimpled ass.
