I used to laugh at the funny pics of people getting “OWNED!” on that particular website, it used to humor me, until I was owned myself. By whom you might ask? By Dulles airport that’s who. United Airlines had a hand in it too, so piss on them as well. It started off with a mechanical problem with my plane. We couldn’t board on time, but would be “kept up to date.” As I sat there waiting to be “kept up to date”, the announcing system was rambling off requests for people to give up their seat because the plane was overbooked as well. I had to ask someone what was being said because I couldn’t understand the dialect being spoken.
Not known to many, but after Miss Cleo’s psychic business took a shit in her turban, she went to work announcing gibberish at Dulles airport. So 30 minutes later, I learn that the flight is no longer on the screen. So curious, I investigate. “Your flight just left, you missed it.”, is what I got from the customer service desk. No announcement that we were boarding? No,”Mr Stewart please board the plane.” Nothing. And when I asked point blank why there was NO announcement whatsoever, I was given “Well 48 people boarded the plane.” WTFO? What does that mean? So here’s your next flight, four hours later, at 4:30 pm. “I can’t print your boarding pass so go to the computer kiosk and reprint your card.” Little did I know, you CAN’T FRIGGEN REPRINT A BOARDING PASS IF YOUR ASS MISSED YOUR FLIGHT AND WERE REBOOKED. So I get on the little black phone and wait for the person who doesn’t giveashit on the other end to pick it up. When that person answered, I am not only told that I cannot print a boarding card from the machine, but the person working the desk never rebooked me; and oh by the way, the next flight you have a chance at getting on now is at 10:30pm.
Side note: Next time you are in the airport, look at those kiosks by the gates for the computer based customer service and note the black phones. They look like someone used them as a framing hammer to build 200 houses. The receiver hooks, if they are even still attached, look as if they caught every fastball thrown in the entire history of baseball.
So like I was saying, I gently hung up the phone like everyone else who was awarded the “Pork Sword Award” from United, and worked my way back to the nice lady who “helped” me. After hinting that I would rather spend the next 10 hours in a holding cell than sit in this pissedthefuckoffstate at the airport waiting for someone to grow some giveshit, she found a computer to print my boarding card for the 4:30 flight. Thanks. So go to gate C14; which is across BFE’s western border. Off I go.
After getting shuttled over there, and waiting for a few hours, Miss Cleo’s little brother finds a microphone and says the gate has shifted…..and get this, right back to where I started in terminal A. You can’t make this shit up people.
So I go back, and wait another hour. And we get to board, I sit down in the pissandshit smelling seat you get when you are seated in the last row and the toilet is broken.. Then suddenly, as if echoing my hope in the airline, I hear the APU wind down and give up the ghost.
Junkipedia: APU (n) Auxiliary Power Unit. A small gas turbine engine used to generate electrical power for the plane. Things like A/C, lights, and broken airplane lavatories that smell like a tenured port-a-potty at the Big Dig use electricity provided from this piece of equipment.
So then moments later from the flight deck PA: “Uh thanks for bearing with us but the route we are set to take is shut down for weather, we expect to be able to take off at about 8pm, so we need you to deplane.” At this point, I was looking for Ashton Kutcher to come barreling out of the shitter and tell me I was Punk’d. But the only thing that came from the airplane dunny was the same odor of feces and urine I had smelled all along.
Do you ever wonder what the circumstances are surrounding an event, when you read about crazy assholes losing their mind at an airport and doing outlandish shit that cause them to be tazered and arrested?
I don’t anymore. I know. And please, don’t taze me bro.
So I deplane, and realize that there are now close to 300 people in line at the customer service desk, just waiting for someone behind the desk to cop an attitude so they can be famous on the evening news. It seemed as though everyone was getting the “ Dulles Blue Plate Special.” So knowing I had a few more hours of waiting, I go for a walk to get away from the desk, and gate. I tell my buddy I was traveling with to call me if something changes. After I walk about 30 minutes away, I get a call. “Hurry man, we are boarding NOW”.
Ever wear flip-flops so you don’t have to screw with taking off shoes for the security checkpoint? Ever try to run 30 minutes worth of strolling back to a gate in flip-flops? Stab a paring knife into your calves and start running in normal shoes, that’s about as close as you will ever get to duplicating it. I made it the first 100 yards before I took them off and ran Kenyan marathon style back to the gate. Escalators really weren’t meant to run down without footwear on either. But you do what you have to do.
Junk wisdom: If you can avoid flying through Dulles, do yourself a solid and avoid it. Consider a pack mule if you have no other alternative. The golden age of airlines has come and gone folks. Customer service is a lost art, seldom practiced in today’s age; and never at the airport. At the airport, the customer service sign is used because it isn’t “PC” to display a sign that reads “The Circle Jerk Begins Here.”
I made the plane and got to my final destination, tired, weary, and stinking like that toilet in the back, but I got there. Doom on you Miss Cleo, and your brother. You couldn’t stop me. Doom on you Dulles airport for throwing me a side of beef and asking me how I liked it. If I had a rape whistle, I would have worn it out that day.
