people are people, or, turning it off

Music: Ascii.Disko: Black Orchid: From Airlines to Lifelines (2011)

Much of what I know about humanity I learned living clichés like clothes and reading Sartre. Which is to say, much of what I have learned about people I have learned passing time in airports.

Returning from a relaxing and productive writing retreat with friends at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain last Friday proved challenging. I want to write about that week soon, about how working in the woods away from home was a welcome release, about how group living is a refreshing respite, about the challenge of a mannered non-bachelordom and shared laundry. But the memories of Friday have screened that pleasant sun, and I want to return to the glare and forget Friday, and the only way to clarity is through, to speak of the clouds. Over the course of twenty-four hours, in the fragile framing of physical exhaustion, one may be deluded enough to think he has insights---self-important insights, perhaps, but glimpses into the failures of composure and human dignity.

As a victim of flight cancellation, I'm one of millions. That plight is not important and downright mundane. But when you're stranded in an airport, your senses of vulnerability are amplified; you notice things you would otherwise not notice.

As I was traveling, the senseless massacre in Oslo was reported on soundless television screens in the airport; I could only piece together what was happening by reading status updates on my Facebook iPhone application. What postmodern plight is this, that a cancelled flight would distress when something much more grave challenged the stability of what we knew as a momentary human decency?

In the thick and humid dark of early morning, after ten hours of anticipatory waiting, my friend L. thought to give our hotel room to a couple with a child. In that gesture, one that cut-through my weary selfishness, I stifled an impulse to cry, both from the guilt of my self-importance and in awe of the sacrificial gesture.

My friend L., who invited me to join the retreat, drove us back to the Portland airport from the Carrabassett Valley to catch a 2:20 p.m. flight into Dulles International Airport last Friday. We arrived at 3:30 p.m., and had a connecting flight to Austin at 7:30 p.m. We shared stories over the delights of airport food as L. texted humorous jabs with her husband in Waco, anxious to reunite with him after a week away in the boonies.

Large, LCD screens reported that our flight had been delayed to 7:40 p.m. Then 8:00 p.m. Later, finally seated in white faux-leather seats yellowed and browned by innumerable butts over decades, an attendant with thick, long grey-once-black hair announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry to report there is a mechanical failure and flight [whatever-it-was] will be delayed. The pilot has refused to fly the plane."

L. and looked at each other startled. Others murmured. "I've never heard of a pilot refusing a plane," said a visibly retired and wealthy businessman.

Minutes later the attendant clarified that the airplane's air-conditioner had failed, and that the pilot was concerned for the comfort of the passengers. The District of Columbia was experiencing one of the worst heatwaves in decades. The airport was sweltering and (disgustingly) humid from the perspiration of traveling bodies; the dated airport air conditioners simply couldn't keep pace with the pace of the postmodern traveler. "United will make a decision whether to cancel the flight at 9:00 p.m.," reported the attendant. "That's all I know at the moment."

Nine came and went; at fifteen minutes past the hour, in a sea of nervous faces, the attendant answered a telephone call at the gate podium. She was visibly nervous; she seemed to be thinking about what to say, as if the news she was about to report was unscripted. "Ladies and gentleman," she said, "the service crew is still working on the air-conditioner. United has decided to push-back any decision on this flight until 9:30." There were audible groans of disappointment. Wearied travelers jostled. A ten-year-old ginger-boy played his Nintendo DS unphased; his nearly identically freckled father, twenty years his senior, looked forward stone-faced. A 37-year old woman who had been traveling through Prague offered her "plug" to help recharge my iPhone, which was dying (I took advantage). A middle-aged man with a bright orange UVA t-shirt offered to get his two, pre-teen daughters sandwiches from Starbucks. My friend L. talked to a businessman; she revealed she and I were professors of communication, and he inquired further about what that meant, exactly (I ignored the trial of definition and ensuing discussion). And there we sat.

"Ladies and gentleman," said the attendant over the loudspeaker at 9:40 p.m., "I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that the air-conditioner is irreparable at this time. The good news is that United has secured another plane for this flight." Travelers were both visibly annoyed and encouraged. "Unfortunately, the new plane for this flight doesn't get in until 11:30 p.m.," she said. There were more groans. "At your convenience, please move one gate over, to D8. We should be boarding around 11:45 p.m. The new time of arrival in Austin is 1:40 a.m."

I urged L. to the "pub" down the concourse for a drink. To my chagrin, the pub closed at 10:00 p.m., but I managed to get an order in before it closed. L. was a good girl and didn't have a drink. She had purchased a Cosmopolitan magazine, portions of which we read to each other, in dramatic style, to entertain ourselves. The shear stupidity of the magazine's "tips" and "confessions" was beyond what I ever imagined "pulp" to consist of these days: one "don't" of bedroom etiquette is that you should not bite the head of your man's penis during fellatio, although it is perfectly acceptable to play with his nipples. Also, a young man confessed he didn't "get any" on a date because he rolled off of a bed during foreplay. Hrm.

The masses tried to assemble at D8, but the gate was small for the number of passengers on the plane, and L. and I ended up across the concourse, at another gate, next to an ever-growing line at a United customer service post. L. and I were sitting on the floor. "Are you in line?" asked a man. "No," I said, "I'm just waiting for my flight." After two more people asked me this question, I moved further down the concourse. The line at the customer service post kept growing, the questions as to my sitting intentions kept coming, and eventually I abandoned my post to standing so as not to be bothered.

Sitting on the floor across from our gate, L. helped another woman working on a word-puzzle in a magazine. I heard the attendant making an announcement at the gate, so walked over to hear, leaving my backpack with L., weaving through the huddled masses.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have some bad news," she said. I noticed her face. It was visibly unnerved. She paused with a knowing dread, like a character in a Lovecraft short story, only with a scarf around her neck instead of starched, frilly collar. "United has cancelled this flight." It was midnight. A man screamed loudly, "What the hell??!!"

"I'm sorry. When I went down to the plane, everything was still a go. This news is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you," she pleaded. She looked visibly pained. "What kind of customer service is this?" screamed a man. "Dammit!" yelped another man. "I'm sorry, but I don't know why this has happened," said the attendant. "I'm just as surprised as you. United will issue you all a voucher for a hotel," she said. "But you need to go to customer service at C20. They will have your information there. Do not go the service post across from this gate."

I watched the attendant. I won't say that her face registered fear, but it did appear she was pained to report the news. She was weary, her long gray hair now frizzy with a swatch sticking to her forehead, glued by sweat. And in that moment, seeing her face, I felt a smidgeon of compassion. There was just nothing that she could do, and she wanted to do something, but there she was, in an impossible situation, and she knew it, and she wanted to avoid what could become---one could feel it---what could become a riot. I knew, like she did, that a riot was not likely, but we could feel the anger in the air. I felt a bit like I was it a situation comedy; I would have laughed if I had a second change of clothes in my backpack (I only had one change, and I already took advantage). The assembled slowly got up and ambled south on the concourse, toward C20, past the long row of glass brinks that refracted series of neon stripes in the color of a rainbow. "If you go to the customer service here, you'll just be turned away. Please go to C20."

Without any sense of haste I moved back to L. across the way, still working with a woman on her word puzzle, sitting on the floor. "United has cancelled our flight," I said. "We're supposed to go to the customer service at C20." L. and the now friend-stranger were nonplussed. "What?" L. exclaimed. "Yeah, it's cancelled. We gotta go," I said.

We made our way to C-20; the line at customer service stretched down the concourse for at least two football fields. The shear length of the line was surreal; at least fifty-feet of the line consisted of a youth sports-team wearing yellow uniforms. Three customer service representatives were perched at computers, and there were at least two-hundred people waiting in the line before our plane-load joined the circus. "Look," I said to L. "The line back at D8 is a fraction, I'm going there." We decided we would each wait at both lines, pretending to be a couple. After I returned back down the concourse to the other customer service line, L. phoned me and we exchanged our confirmation numbers. While we waited, armed with my booking confirmation number L. managed to rebook both of us on a flight out the next day (or rather, that morning) at 9:00 a.m. on the phone. The only task, now nearing 1:00 a.m., was to secure someplace to sleep that night. The only way was a "voucher" for a hotel, and that required an interface with a United representative. "If you get to a person before I do," said L., "be sure to get us two separate rooms." The fact is that L. and I are friends and not a couple; we are both light sleepers, and I snore like a banshee. Strategically, however, we needed to pretend we were a couple to get through this.

An hour and a half passes, and I finally reach the customer service counter. United agents were pulling people from the customer service lines to gates in close proximity, and issuing vouchers there. I was pulled across the concourse to a gate by a middle-aged woman of Asian descent. Her English was poor, and we had some difficulty communicating. After a few minutes she issued me a voucher for a hotel room. I stated I needed two, another for my partner.

"Why you need two?" she asked.

"Because I snore," I said. The actual reason was because L. was waiting in a different line way down the concourse. But I did have her confirmation number.

After some minutes, the woman said, "she was not on your flight." She insinuated I was trying to get a free room voucher.

"No, she was on the flight," I said. I supplied the confirmation number again.

What happened next was astonishing. The representative went "blank"---she just shut off. It's almost as if I could see a switch flip in her head: she was no longer concerned with helping, she just wanted to be rid of me and, apparently, my deceit. It was 1:15 a.m. "I'm sorry, your partner is not in the system. There's nothing I can do," she said. "Maybe they can pull her up at customer service."

"But you pulled me out of that line," I said. "At least you can put me back in the front of the line you pulled me from?"

"No, I can't," she said curtly.

"M'am. I waited in that line for an hour and a half, and now you're telling me you cannot pull up my partner's information on the computer. I don't think it is fair to make me go through another hour in the line again. Can't you direct me to the front of the line?"

Angrily, with a huff, she grabbed my arm and escorted me across the concourse to the front of the line. Within ten minutes I had a new agent, and within five minutes from that L. was by my side, with her boarding pass. The agent was entertained by the confusion, it seemed, and I won't go into details as I've blogged enough. Basically we had to tell the amused agent that we wanted to go, since we would miss the hotel shuttle if she didn't let us go. Apparently when we were rebooked for a new flight we were erased from the system in a way that prevented our getting a voucher for the hotel. The short story is that I was issued the very last hotel voucher (at least seventy people behind us stranded and resigned to sleeping in the airport). We arrived at our room at 3:00 a.m., I slept on the couch and L. in the bed (if you can call it sleeping---neither of us did anything more than shut our eyes for couple of restless hours). On our way L. wanted to give our voucher to a couple with an infant who were stranded. That didn’t work out.

Obviously, we managed to make it back to Texas on Saturday.

What I cannot forget about this (all too common) ordeal was the way in which the first woman to help me shut down, and how this compared with the attendant that announced the flight cancellation. The woman who announced the flight cancellation was visibly pained; you could hear it in her voice, you could see it in her face. She felt terrible. But the woman who helped me, she felt nothing like empathy. She was cold. She had managed to find that place of indifference and shot up a wall of steely fortitude. I remember saying, in response to this perceived way, "M'am, I'll hug you if you help me, and I give great hugs." I laughed at saying it, but she was not amused. She was like stone.

In retrospect, I recognize my feelings were exacerbated by exhaustion; it's pretty incredible how existential a dramatic reading of Cosmo in an airport pub can feel when you are going on very little sleep. Still, it's also amazing how some United customer service representatives can become so callous and unyielding . . . one can only imagine it is a defense borne of years of mismanagement, of terrible service, of ugly and angry travelers. Since dedicating myself to the academic lifestyle, I've traveled frequently; never have I had such an unpleasant experience, nor met airline representatives so unyielding and rude. Last Friday/Saturday was, unquestionably, the worst travel experience of my life.

But as L. pointed out, on many occasions, there is cause for hope. Despite the ugliness of some travelers and airline representatives, we came across some amazingly good natured people. Rog, a medical student, was down right giddy about his two-hour stay in a five star hotel, which he gushed about at breakfast. The people in line with L. were friendly and helped her pass the time. A woman from Nigeria, who now worked with the VFA in Indianapolis, told me stories about unbearable turbulence on the descent into DC. A man waiting in line with us from the National Guard told us stories about training exercises in triple-digit heat. To be sure, being stranded in Dulles was a miserable experience; but L. pressed me to think about the good of people in all of this, that they pressed through optimistically, that given the choice between anger and resigned slap-happy, most people chose the latter.

I want to think that when given the choice of tragedy or comedy, most of us choose the latter. I want to, at least, no matter how I feel.