Saturday, March 17, 2007

REGRETS, WE’VE HAD A FEW: We here at US Airways are aware that the measure of an organization is its ability to operate in trying circumstances. We also are aware that some of you are giving us unsatisfactory grades for our performance at Reagan National Airport during this week’s weather delays – grades as low as A-, perhaps even B+, though we choose to ignore the latter. Let us assure you that while we stand by the wonderful job done by the staff we had on hand to deal with the situation -- all six or so of them -- we do have a few regrets:

We regret that the weather caused us to delay, and then to cancel, several flights.

We regret that when an elderly lady asked "did you call my name," our customer service representative responded, "no, not unless your name is Stand Back," which customer Spaceman found so funny that he laughed out loud, which caused passenger Middle-Aged-Brush-Cut-Hill-Staffer-Type to ask aggressively if passenger Spaceman was laughing at his mother, which caused passenger Spaceman, feeling that MABCHST was laughably threatening him, to continue to laugh, which did not exactly smooth feelings. What we regret most about this was that we did not have it on video to post on YouTube.

We regret that many of you did not see the humor in our announcement that we were imminently boarding the Pittsburgh flight, followed a moment later by our announcement that no planes legally could leave from DCA. In comedy, timing is everything, and we regret that you lack receptive comedic timing.

We regret that we told you at approximately 5:00 that the FAA had grounded all flights out of DCA for the remainder of the day and night. We admit that we should have chosen a better story, since you could see flights leaving from other terminals and in fact we actually boarded and sent out a half-dozen flights throughout the afternoon and night. Believe us, if we could do it again, we would choose a better fiction, perhaps that most of the flights were being held because the terror threat level meter was on the fritz, or because the pilots were almost this close to passing the breathalyzer, or perhaps because their flight numbers were unlucky.

We regret that we told everybody booked on a cancelled flight to get in the customer service line and stay there for rebooking. That line got long, didn’t it? Actually, we don’t regret this, because we had never before seen a line that went from the end of the terminal all the way to the security barrier, and now we have something to tell our children.

We regret that we had only two customer service reps at the customer service desk to handle rebooking for all of the several hundred stranded passengers. That is why, after many hours of waiting, you were told that you should leave the customer service line in the terminal and go to the ticketing lines outside the security area, where there were more agents working.

We regret that we didn’t tell you that "more agents" really meant "only two more agents" (for a total of four) at the ticketing desks and that there were three times as many people waiting for rebooking there. You must admit, that was kind of funny.

Perhaps we should have called in more agents, but there were a lot of people in the terminal, and you kind of smelled bad. Admit it, you did not smell great. Or perhaps that was us. In any event, we regret the smells, and we regret that writing this letter has made us remember them.

We regret that we told you to leave your places in line, find somewhere to sit, and call our 1-800 number, where you would get faster and more effective service. We regret this because hundreds of people in line immediately and vocally disagreed, informing you that almost all calls to that line got busy signals, and that almost all of the ones that got through were put on hold until the cell batteries died. We worked hard to get you to trust us, and we wish we hadn't wasted that trust on such inconsequential lies. We would prefer to spend that trust on bigger, more spectacular lies.

We also think it’s funny that Cingular and T-Mobile couldn’t handle the calls from DCA and basically shut down the service there after 5:00. This isn't technically a regret, but we really wanted to mention it.

We regret that many of you think we should have triaged the few flights that were leaving, and identified people in line that were going to or near the destinations of those flights, and assigned seats on those flights according to people’s places in line instead of according to who was nearby when they called the flight. All of our lives we have lived by other people’s rules, and now that we are all grown up, we prefer not to have any rules. We want you to think of us as your cool aunt, or that guy who sometimes dances naked in his window. So don't give us your rules, Messrs. Efficiency and Courtesy.

We regret that when passenger Amber asked passenger Spaceman what college he attended, passenger Linnea laughed heartily and said “he’s SO OLD.” We think that was mean, just a little.

We regret that for several hours our representative’s responses to all questions, like “why aren’t there more agents working,” or “I can get a train, but can you help me get my bag to the subway station, because I am in a wheelchair and obviously can’t carry it” was a smirk and a shrug. Our representative is a big fan of Jim Halpert, but lacks both the hair and the charisma. We spoke with him about this, and thereafter he gave the proper response, which was “what do you think I can do about that?”

We regret that many of you found this unsatisfactory. What did you think we could do about that?

We regret that passenger Spaceman was stranded in an airport with ample traveling money but no cell-phone service bars, and passenger Jordan was stranded in close proximity to passenger Spaceman with four bars but no money. What, we asked ourself, would Ronald Coase say?

Passenger Spaceman bought passenger Jordan a slice of pizza and a coke. Passenger Jordan loaned his cell phone to passenger Linnea. We regret that passenger Spaceman will have to repeat Professor Coase’s class.

We regret that, with no T-Mobile service in the airport, the following email from passenger Spaceman didn't get through: "My beloved Spcwmn: Never lving DCA. Rmembr me fondly, lv alwys, Spcman." We're suckers for a good weepy.

We regret that Ben, the dreadlocked UVM student we plucked from the line to assist us, was unable to translate satisfactorily common phrases like “ticketing counter,” “security checkpoint,” and “totally fucked” into pidgin Hebrew to the Russian couple that, contrary to their expectations, clearly was not traveling to Israel. We promise you that we had a positively ingenious punishment planned for Ben’s failure, but he escaped by circumventing our flight-prevention system and getting his mother to find him a flight to Hartford tomorrow.

We regret that so many of you were unable to stay your urge to defecate that you caused a plumbing mishap and a quite-unpleasant smell in the restrooms in the middle of the concourse, inescapable for the fifty or so of you stuck in an immobile line within smelling distance. Next time, remember: when stranded in an airport for potentially up to two days, do not defecate! So rude. Were you raised in an airport? (That’s a little airport humor.)

We regret that you maintained good humor, struck friendships with each other, and helped each other out when possible. Had you not been in such better moods than us, we would not have been forced to call in the airport police to maintain order.

We regret that you were upset when the airport police’s first action upon being called to maintain order was to tell you that, to maintain order, we should be shutting down the terminal early and sending you home after six or eight hours in line, but that you could come back and get in line again at 4:00 the following morning. Immediately, order began to dissolve, proving us right. We regret that you disappointed us in this way.

We regret that Rousseau and Lenny Bruce correctly predicted that in a state of pure anarchy, communities would form and, through consensus, create laws. In particular, we regret that you decided amongst yourselves that everybody in line would get a number, and that the line would re-form at 4:00 in the morning so that nobody would lose the place that he or she held for six or eight hours. We already told you that we do not like rules, and therefore we fully backed the police in crushing this plan.

We regret that passenger Spaceman almost had to get arrested, trying to explain in polite and calm tones that everybody would follow the police’s instructions to the letter, but that all you were trying to do was assign numbers so that the line could reform in the morning. The police were looking for an insurrection to quell, and passenger Spaceman was being extremely disrespectful in failing to adopt an appropriately confrontational tone. You can see where this would upset a police officer, so by failing to escalate the situation in an expected manner, passenger Spaceman forced the police to undertake that obligation.

We regret that the police spoke into their shoulders, presumably to the video camera man, about what to do about “the man in the white shirt” (passenger Spaceman), right in front of passenger Spaceman. This was, we admit, quite rude, and passenger Spaceman’s presence probably kept the policeman from saying what he really thought.

We regret that even after the police successfully fomented an insurrection to quell, you cooperatively agreed to be quelled, adopting once again an appalling good humor and enviable camaraderie. We are a bit jealous. At US Airways, we maintain a professional surliness and generally don't like each other.

We regret that one of our two working agents assisted a single passenger, known to those of you in the line as The Blonde, from 9:15 until at least 11:30. We don’t really know what was up there. Agree with us, though – there is something a little amazing about having a single agent to process hundreds of stranded passengers in a non-moving line. We believe that that qualifies as “zen,” though we’re not spiritual people.

We regret that at 11:00, we added a few agents. Frankly, it hadn’t occurred to us to do this until the police made us do it. As it turned out, it was really easy, and it made everything move a lot faster. Who knew? In any event, we regret that the police, having failed to be unsuccessful in brutally quelling your manufactured insurrection (which, we hasten to add, would have allowed us to go home to our families sooner), also failed to be unsuccessful in quelling our organic one.

Frankly, we regret this whole “customer service” misnomer. Not one customer served us! And there was $3 cappuccino all over the concourse, at least until the places closed at 9:00. English language, we shake our fist at you!

We regret the exclamation points in the preceding paragraph.

We regret that although we typically eschew rules, we are compelled to follow one rule: everybody whose flight is cancelled is given a 1-800 number to call and a blue ticket called an “inconvenience ticket.” That ticket proves your inconvenience. We don’t think it was quite right for so many of you to laugh at this.

We regret that we ran out of inconvenience tickets. Those of you who did not get them were not inconvenienced, and we regret the inconvenience of our being unable to inconvenience you.

We regret that when we were finally able to process you, after six and a half hours for passenger Spaceman and hours longer for many others, you still had a two-hour wait to pick up your checked luggage, unless you wanted us to send it to your house, in which case you would have a two-hour wait on the phone to tell us that, unless you didn't call, in which case we had no fucking idea what to do with your luggage.

We regret, finally, that we sent passenger Spaceman out into the freezing night with nothing but suit pants, a dress shirt, dress shoes, a briefcase (contents: book, iPod, two forgotten nine-hour-old Dunkin Donuts that were supposed to be a gift for Spacewoman, phone with dead battery), and the promise of a trip to Los Angeles in a few days. We just could not figure out how to get our hands on those pants.

Sincerely,
US Airways.

Passenger Spaceman also regrets not saying “yes” when the giant man in a fur coat at the Crowne Plaza offered him a spot among the men in warm-up suits in either his Rolls Royce or his Bentley for a cross-country drive to “Hollywood.” Spaceman adopts, for future reference, the following rule: How bad can a guy be if he’s wearing a fur coat?

edited to add: The Adventures of Isaac Spaceman continue here.

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