Sunday, December 18, 2011

Deedee's Airport Adventure Part 2

Currently, as I write this blog post, I have no internet. Why? Because US Airlines are cheap bastards who do not offer free wifi, or any wifi at all, to my knowledge. I guess thats just Southwest or whatever. Here in what I think is the state of Minnesota, it is only a little past seven... My flight left at 5:15. Because Im stupid and ended up at the wrong gate to Phoenix. The only real problem with this was that it was a US Airline flight and not Delta, otherwise, the nice people at the gat could have jumped on their computers and switched me over if I asked really nicely. But the US Airline people were middle aged irate women... Probably just grumpy from going through menopause... Or dealing with a rogue bear in the cabin of their last flight... This seems more plausible to me due to how irritated they seemed to be by my very existence... Than again, they could have been tired and grumpy from working a possible thirty hour shift to Barcelona and back or something like that... I like the bear idea better... But, you know...

Anyway, they very grumpily told me I was at the wrong gate and that I should go jump on my plane. The only problem? My flight had left ten minutes earlier at gate B 2. You can understand the honest mistake made that I had misread my ticket to be E 2 which happened to also be a flight to Phoenix and left only ten minutes later than my ticket said, I just figured there was a delay and didnt even notice the airline difference. Ive flown on them all and so they all blur together for me and it wouldnt be the first time Ive had to switch air lines at a connection. But these ladies, they didnt understand that im not a complete idiot. They saw me as an obnoxious pest who was too far away from home and lost in a large air port. I mean, this place has a mall! Well, what I would consider a small mall... I found it in my search for food, which I'll talk about later.

In my defense, the tram was a little confusing at first. I rode it back and forth a couple of times to find my gate because I hadnt been aware the first time that we had reached the end of the line, it then went all the way straight back to the beginning of the route and I had to wait for the end again. I blame the tram for my being lost to begin with. And when I finally found the gate that said “Phoenix” in big red, dotty letters, I was relieved and sat down to wait for my flight time to come around and wrote the last blog post.

This is where we get to the lovely irritated women who looked as though theyd just fought off a large bear. I asked ever so politely (and I mean it, strangers always think Im absolutely adorable... Its probably the soft, sweet way that I talk to strangers. Especially important people who I want to help me switch my flight.), anyway, I asked them “Where would I go to fix this?”

The lady looked at me, I think she rolled her eyes and said “You need to find someone in Delta.”

I looked at her with my best confused puppy look and said “Well, where would I go to do that?”

She looked at me like I had six heads! She inhaled sharply and repeated, “You need to find someone in Delta.”

“Yes,” I said, managing to keep my polite tone although she was beginning to irritate me with her attitude, “But where would I go to do that?”

I couldnt understand why she seemed so irritated when I asked this question, I thought it perfectly logical, as a misguided lost person in an air port, to ask where I would go to find someone from Delta who could help me. But this lady, she looked like she was about to tear my head off. Im pretty sure that if I were flying on her air line, she wouldnt have treated me the way she did, she would have put on a plastic Barbie smile and directed me to a help source. But I was from Delta, she didnt care about me and she was irritated that I was requesting that she point me in the right direction of where I can go.

The other lady, who looked just as exhausted and irritated shoved her over to one side and mustering up all she had in her to look as though she had not just fought off a raging flight cabin bear told me that the closest Delta terminal was in C and if I could convince them, they may be able to switch me to the last US Airline flight out to Phoenix.

So I took the tram back to C and scoped out someone who looked helpful. I saw my fair share of grumpy looking gate attendants before finally giving up and walking back to the beginning of the C section of the air port to ask the person at the first gate. And thats when I saw Ed standing at gate C-4.

Ed would soon become the hero of this story. He was wearing a red jacket which said to me that he must be someone important in a world full of navy blue jacket wearing people. I walked up and in my sweet voice I told you about, I said “Im sorry to bother you, sir, but do you have a minute, I've gotten myself all mixed up and I need some help.” I managed to sound english somehow. It was completely unintentional.

Ed smiled and said “Of course, what can I help you with miss?”

Well,” I thought up my story as I went twisting small details in hopes that he would be more likely to sympathize, “You see, I flew in and when I got here I looked at the screen for my gate number, I must have read the wrong line or something because I wound up at a phoenix gate but it wasnt my gate and I didnt know this until it was too late.”

Ed made a thinking face for a moment and said “Well, you know what? Theres one more flight leaving out of here for Phoenix tonight with US Airlines I think. Its a little later but it will get you there.”

I nodded excitedly and said “Thats perfect!”

He smiled again (great customer service person, this guy, he had a very grandfatherly aura about him, normally strange old people slightly frighten me for reasons I dont know, but Ed became my new favorite person for then next hour) he told me “Go up to the customer service desk between gates C-1 and C-2, tell them Ed sent you to change your flight to the eight-o-clock departure.”

I was overjoyed! I thanked him and excitedly skipped off to the customer service desk, how had I missed it earlier!? I wound up being very glad I did because I was faced with another exhausted looking woman who typed stuff into her computer and said she could do nothing to help me because she could only switch me to a same airline flight as my missing my flight was not their fault. So I went back to find Ed again who very happily got to work on switching my flight and gave me full instructions as to what to do from there.

Go to “E-4, show them this ticket, if they ask where your bag is tell them its with Delta and you shouldnt have any problems... And get something to eat while you're at it, I bet you haven’t eaten since you got here, have you?”

He was right. I thanked him, then ran off to find a Taco Bell where I ordered a $2 meal deal... Only it was actually a $2.20 meal deal. The guy handed me a bag which I was slightly dismayed to see contained a container of nacho cheese, either they had gotten my order wrong or they hadnt felt like actually putting the nacho cheese in my burrito. I didnt complain, instead I ran off to find my gate where I was able to sit down and see that the nacho cheese actually went with the nachos I had been given in the place of a bag of Doritoes. Win!

And now here I am... Im not 100% sure where here is... Im snow about 95.9% sure that im somewhere in Minnesota... Either way, Im well fed and anxious to just get to Arizona where Im sure my mom will have a speech planned out about being more responsible. Fun stuff!


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