1) There are concrete reasons why United Airlines is facing bankruptcy. One of the most obvious is the level of customer service. When you’re in a hole, for survival’s sake you should stop digging. I cannot tell you how many times I was on the verge of suggesting to surly United employee after surly United employee that if the job sucks so much it might be time for a career change. Don’t blame your job choice on me, ma’am. It’s not my fault that you hate what you do.
2) TSA, being a government organization, is so disgustingly full of poorly-trained, ill-educated timeserving chimpanzees that I honestly feel it would be better to just hand out firearms with frangible ammunition to every adult passenger and let us deal with potential security problems in the air on our own. Not every TSA employee is so deficient in basic intelligence, but enough of them are that I despair of any hope for meaningful change in airport security. That goes especially for the cretins in Pittsburgh. If, after you’ve checked our boarding passes twice before entering security, you’d like me to hold onto it so I can show it to you a third time once I’ve stepped through the metal detector, put up a sign.
3) People complain that back in the old days, people wore suits and jackets on airplanes, and don’t any more. These people do not regularly travel with two 60-pound pelican cases, a 50-pound golf bag, a 40-pound duffel bag, two camera bags, and two laptop cases. I can also only assume that they like being uncomfortable in a suit for hours at a time.
4) Internet access in hotel rooms, especially free internet access in hotel rooms, is cool.
5) In my job, you get to work with some very neat, very nice people.
6) I’m sure they hoped that after the election, we’d forget about it. Nuh-uh. Tear ‘em all down. First CBS, then the Gray Lady. With all the moralizing, finger-wagging, and non-stories that get overreported in the MSM these days, it’d be nice for the Ethics Mirror to be lifted higher than knee-level and turned to face the wielder.
Maybe there were halcyon days of airline travel, but I have never experienced it. I think of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy settles into the prop plane for his trip to Siberia or Mongolia or somesuch. He wore a suit, sat down, slouched, tipped his hat over his eyes, and fell asleep for, presumably, 20 hours.
From David’s post, I’m assuming that the halcyon days are officially over.
Indy didn’t have to take his shoes and belt off before getting permission to board, that’s for sure. And he probably got to carry his whip on the airplane.