Travel Thoughts
Wednesday night, I flew home from Toronto. The last leg of the trip took me from Philly to RDU, and seated in the two rows behind me were three small children. (and by "small" I mean "had not yet developed language skills"). The flight itself was scheduled to leave Philly at around 11, and it ran late. Various delays on other USAir flights, including my own, kept us grounded until everyone had caught up and was on board. So there was sitting. And there was the late hour. And there was the general plane-ness of it all, all of which boiled down to that the kids might not have known we were delayed per se, but they did know that it was late and they were tired and someplace strange and noisy with lots of strangers, to predictable effect.
And, being the Important World-Weary Business Traveler that I am, I got deeply irritated by this...for about six seconds. Then I picked up a book, put in my earbuds, and started reading. Mainly, I just felt bad for the kids' parents, who were clearly exhausted (they'd been some of our last runners) and were doing their best, and were embarrassed that various of our other in-flight companions were stewing in their seats in high dudgeon over the noise.
On the other hand, there was Pearson. My connection to Philly out of Toronto was delayed - seriously delayed. As in "an hour past departure time, there was no plane and there was no USAir rep at the gate, and there were no other USAir flights going out of Pearson that evening." I was getting fairly used to the idea that I'd be spending the night in Toronto. The various folks around me were doing the usual array of "things to do if you don't know if you're getting out of the airport", which was to say some were calling home, some were messing around on their smartphones or laptops, some were reading, some were sleeping, and some were bitching. Three, in particular. Very Important Business Travelers. VERY Important. One of them had a meeting Thursday. A VERY important meeting. Her companion had his laptop open and was scanning USAir flights out of Toronto in the morning, while she kept on dismissing the ones that would get her there on time for the VERY important meeting in question with "I'm not getting up that early." And she and the other two just kept going around and around with travel horror stories that were all predicated on "the airline did this to me personally". The fact that there was no one at the gate? Clearly designed to make sure that the VERY important meeting was missed, and nothing else. The lack of a plane? Clearly done to inconvenience them, bad weather causing flight delays be damned. And so on and so forth, and as you sit there listening to that, it's very easy to get caught up in it. It's a form of entitled self-pity, and I found that I had the exact opposite reaction to it that I did to those kids. For about six seconds I was on board with it - it's fun to make snarky comments, fun to be one of the cool kids, fun to feel like the world's revolving around you and this is ALL ABOUT YOU.
Then I realized they were, in parlance, douchebags. Yes, missing a meeting is problematic. I've done it a couple of times myself (though, frankly, from the dollar amounts they were discussing riding on this meeting versus the accouterments of the folks in question, it frankly didn't sound like that big of a deal), but there are ways to deal. Videoconf. Reschedule. Call in. Whatever. But in the grand scheme of things, it ain't much compared to "kid is home sick and you need to get back" or "was on deployment and haven't seen family in months" or a lot of other things, and that's just in the "things that can happen at an airport named after a Rush song" division. If the worst that happens to you while traveling is that you get stuck for an extra night in a lovely city with modern amenities and a restaurant like Allen's in it, you're doing pretty well. Yeah, you want your airlines to be on the stick and at least let you know what the status of things might be, but there's a long way from that to deciding to every ground-level USAir employee is personally engaged in a vendetta against your business success because you are that much of a unique and delicate snowflake.
(A side note - it always amuses me that the people who whine the loudest about this stuff to the entire waiting area - and they are loud, because they want everyone to know just how Put Out They Are By All This - are always the ones who present themselves as "business road warriors" and "coffee is for closers!" types. It's everyone else - the kids, the folks with families, the students, the soldiers, the tourists, the business types without bluster or broken-off volume knobs - who figure out how to deal with things, and then proceed to do so.)
So. In retrospect, give me the screaming kids who are actually kids -and not big babies - every time.
And, being the Important World-Weary Business Traveler that I am, I got deeply irritated by this...for about six seconds. Then I picked up a book, put in my earbuds, and started reading. Mainly, I just felt bad for the kids' parents, who were clearly exhausted (they'd been some of our last runners) and were doing their best, and were embarrassed that various of our other in-flight companions were stewing in their seats in high dudgeon over the noise.
On the other hand, there was Pearson. My connection to Philly out of Toronto was delayed - seriously delayed. As in "an hour past departure time, there was no plane and there was no USAir rep at the gate, and there were no other USAir flights going out of Pearson that evening." I was getting fairly used to the idea that I'd be spending the night in Toronto. The various folks around me were doing the usual array of "things to do if you don't know if you're getting out of the airport", which was to say some were calling home, some were messing around on their smartphones or laptops, some were reading, some were sleeping, and some were bitching. Three, in particular. Very Important Business Travelers. VERY Important. One of them had a meeting Thursday. A VERY important meeting. Her companion had his laptop open and was scanning USAir flights out of Toronto in the morning, while she kept on dismissing the ones that would get her there on time for the VERY important meeting in question with "I'm not getting up that early." And she and the other two just kept going around and around with travel horror stories that were all predicated on "the airline did this to me personally". The fact that there was no one at the gate? Clearly designed to make sure that the VERY important meeting was missed, and nothing else. The lack of a plane? Clearly done to inconvenience them, bad weather causing flight delays be damned. And so on and so forth, and as you sit there listening to that, it's very easy to get caught up in it. It's a form of entitled self-pity, and I found that I had the exact opposite reaction to it that I did to those kids. For about six seconds I was on board with it - it's fun to make snarky comments, fun to be one of the cool kids, fun to feel like the world's revolving around you and this is ALL ABOUT YOU.
Then I realized they were, in parlance, douchebags. Yes, missing a meeting is problematic. I've done it a couple of times myself (though, frankly, from the dollar amounts they were discussing riding on this meeting versus the accouterments of the folks in question, it frankly didn't sound like that big of a deal), but there are ways to deal. Videoconf. Reschedule. Call in. Whatever. But in the grand scheme of things, it ain't much compared to "kid is home sick and you need to get back" or "was on deployment and haven't seen family in months" or a lot of other things, and that's just in the "things that can happen at an airport named after a Rush song" division. If the worst that happens to you while traveling is that you get stuck for an extra night in a lovely city with modern amenities and a restaurant like Allen's in it, you're doing pretty well. Yeah, you want your airlines to be on the stick and at least let you know what the status of things might be, but there's a long way from that to deciding to every ground-level USAir employee is personally engaged in a vendetta against your business success because you are that much of a unique and delicate snowflake.
(A side note - it always amuses me that the people who whine the loudest about this stuff to the entire waiting area - and they are loud, because they want everyone to know just how Put Out They Are By All This - are always the ones who present themselves as "business road warriors" and "coffee is for closers!" types. It's everyone else - the kids, the folks with families, the students, the soldiers, the tourists, the business types without bluster or broken-off volume knobs - who figure out how to deal with things, and then proceed to do so.)
So. In retrospect, give me the screaming kids who are actually kids -and not big babies - every time.
No comments have been added yet.
