airline aggravation

[Marvin D.]

. .really?

Really?

Who writes a 5,000 word essay on air travel inconveniences? I flew from Africa to the United States to the Caribbean to Europe and back here last year, with a lot of hassles. My suitcase got lost while flying from Holland to Switzerland, and I had to borrow clothes and toiletries for a week and a half. I didn't get it back for nearly six months. When my family flew from the Caribbean to Holland, they had changed the policy about how many suitcases we were allowed to have, and we had to pay $200 extra. When flying from Holland to Germany, they delayed us because of a baggage issue that wasn't our fault, held us up at security, and then they closed the gate before we were able to get there. I could go on and on, but. .

. .it's life. Deal with it. Seriously

[Christian A.]

Why am I apparently the only person who understands what bookworm is trying to say and sympathizes with him...?

[~JCGJ~]

Because you're the only one who doesn't realize how much fun hassling bookworm can be.

[Termite]

Oh, I sympathize... I've had my share of plane issues, including being stuck in an airport for eight or eight.five hours. Sitting... and sitting... I still reminisce when I go by the walking chairs in Terminal B. Which, ironically, is where my mother and I sat for a while during another five hour stay after a three hour one in the airport before. Not to mention the times we've been stuck sitting on a plane with no water or air conditioning for a couple hours, almost 100 degrees outside... yeesh. Lost baggage. The works.

Things happen. Does it stink? Oh, sure, but it's a character development and a witness depending on how we react to things like this. You can either choose to be frustrated and irritated, or stay calm and at peace, even if the situation could have been different based on the way they handled things. People are influenced by our behavior, not always our words. Yes, you might have had a *right* to be angry, but we're also under a commandment to have joy. Next time anything happens IRL you'll probably find yourself able to bear it more considering it could be so much worse, such as this.

Think about it... this will be a story you can tell the grand kids when they complain about how their hover board was leaking green smoke.

[bookworm]

You have every right in the world to be entitled. Sorry, expectant.

Indeed I do. When I pay someone money, especially a large amount of money, I expect at least a superficial attempt by them to uphold their end of the agreement, which there was not.

If your "contract" terms do indeed guarantee your arrival at a specific time, then I suggest you sue the airline for breach of contract. Perhaps then you will feel vindicated.

Again, off point. But you’re getting closer. While there was a specific arrival time (or day, for that matter) missing it by a day is not the issue I’m having! It’s that there was a chance to easily avoid it, the best solution for both parties, and they wouldn’t even consider it.

It's rare that I take a flight where there isn't some kind of delay, inconvenience or mixup. That's the price we pay for being able to take advantage of high speed travel.

I agree! In fact, I’m the first person who expressed those sentiments in this thread!

Nowhere in the post did I say, and nowhere in my mind to I believe or expect air travel should or will be without incident. Honestly, I said the exact opposite, why is everyone trying to make me take a stand I am not making?

Who writes a 5,000 word essay on air travel inconveniences?

There are two ways of answering that, depending on what exactly you’re getting at. (I’m confused because, like Jelly, you seem to place emphasis on the length, which changes your tone.)

If you mean why did I write so much on it (implying overreaction through extra words), again it’s simply because that’s how much it took to tell my story. It was a long story, thus it will be a long tale.

If you mean why did I write it at all (implying unnecessary complaining by posting in the first place), it’s because I wanted to share my experience with people who may want to read it.

I’m intrigued at how much is being taken away from my post that was never put in it. I’m not complaining about anything, my post was not a sob story, it was an objective narrative. You all are the ones choosing to read all the complaints into it, I merely wrote what happened to me. The tale actually has the exact opposite content from what you seem to have read, as I repeatedly explained that I was not complaining or upset about the various things that happened, I understand they have to be accepted.

I didn’t post this story to get pity, for I seek no pity! Nor did I post it to complain, I have no complaints! (About the events of the trip themselves.) The reason for posting was simply to share my story because I thought people might like to hear it. I found it interesting, and assumed others would as well, because I have never witnessed such a thorough domino effect of things going wrong in every possible way.

I had believed what we did here was share about things that happens in our lives with our online friends, so I did that. I seem to have been wrong in the assessment of the purpose of this community.

. .it's life. Deal with it. Seriously

I am! Again, I am not complaining, I am merely recounting what happened. I suppose it could be easy to mistake it for complaining since I am only telling about bad things, but that’s because it’s a story about bad things happening! I thought I compensated for that possibility of misunderstanding by repeatedly clarifying that I wasn’t angry about the individual incidents.

I’m not saying my life was ruined by this, because obviously it wasn’t. In the big picture this was nothing. But I wasn’t aware that meant I couldn’t share it with the community. Usually what someone does when they see their friends after returning from a trip is tell about how it went. This is a story I will be telling my real life friends, I didn’t see a reason not to tell you guys too.

@ Termite’s post made while I was writing this one:
That’s pretty much how I’m taking this thing, it’s just apparently not being conveyed here. I’m not saying I hate the airline and all their people and I hold them responsible for ruining my trip and I’ll get them back someway, etc. All I’m saying is there was a definite breakdown in customer service. That’s not a retaliatory statement, it’s just the truth. And suddenly I’m attacked for saying it, which I can’t understand.

As you say, because you’re speaking sensibly, I do have a right to be angry. I’m not, really, in the long run, but that’s not the point. If I was, I would have the right to be. I’m not reacting to nothing, there is a valid cause there. That’s what I’m trying to defend here, against the notion that I have no grounds to be upset. You have people like Jelly declaring that simply by virtue of being an airline the industry is beyond reproach regardless of behavior and the customers are actually the villains if they dare bring attention to examples of poor service, and that is ridiculous.

[jelly]

Another tl;dr post?

Just keep justifying your right to be angry buddy. I'm sure you'll eventually convince everyone just how terribly wronged you were. And then you can be pleased with yourself.

[Jehoshaphat]

I hope this won't happen to me as I am travelling on an airplane in just a few days.

[bookworm]

Another tl;dr post?

Seriously? First I’m misrepresented, and now I can’t address it? It was not ‘too long’ it was as long as necessary to address the misconceptions being propagated. If you’re not going to read my defense then you have no right to hold on to your false conviction, because you aren’t willing to hear why it’s incorrect.
Is that why I’m always being misunderstood around here? Because once people get an impression of something I say in their head they stop listening while I correct it? That’s quite unfair. Especially if it means people won’t read this post, because this is an important one.

I was thinking this over last night and I believe I see the problem here. There’s something important that you have to understand about my post, or it will be interpreted the wrong way. I thought it was apparent, but perhaps it isn’t.

My post is a recollection from my trip, not a statement of my current attitude today.
I’m thinking the reason people are viewing it as negative is because they’re thinking ‘Man, as soon as bookworm got back he posted a huge rant about airports. He’s such a complainer!’ That’s all wrong.
I posted it when I got back because that was when I could post it, of course. Not because I was going ‘Oh my gosh, let me rant about what happened to me!’ but because, as I said, I just wanted to tell what happened to me. It’s a story! And about the length, once again, that’s how long the story is so of course that’s how long it will be. The length is not indicative of the intent of a post, only of the content.

So, my post was a recounting of a series of events I experienced in my recent travel that I wanted to share with those who wanted to read it. Not to vent, just to tell. ‘Hey, this happened to me.’ People do it here every day.
If you perceive a sense of anger, that’s because, again, I’m telling a story not making a statement. I am not angry now, but in the story you bet I was, because the story is telling what happened and how I felt about it as it happened. So you’re darn right I finally broke and became angry in the moment as all that was being dumped on me; I defy any of you to claim you wouldn’t have been if you were in my place. You have to remember that this wasn’t just a delay here and an inconvenience there, that happens whenever you travel and I can and have shrugged it off. This was nonstop, beginning to end, issue after issue - issue causing issue. Even someone with the most placid constitution would have finally cracked just from the absurdity of the situation.

However now, after everything finally settled, I’m not angry about anything. I am still irritated at a few things, but they are entirely separate from the incidents of the trip themselves and for entirely different reasons.
I’m not angry my flight had maintenance, that would be absurd. I’m glad that happened or it may have crashed, duh. I am irritated the maintenance caused me to miss the next flight, but not because of the maintenance itself, because the maintenance was on top of the flight already being late, which was the real issue. Remember that if we had started out on time to begin with we would have caught the final flight even with the maintenance delay.
I’m not angry our trip was delayed a day after we missed our last flight. I am irritated that we were allowed to be delayed a day when there was no reason to be. They could have put us on the alternate flight, we would have gotten home on schedule despite everything that happened, they wouldn’t have had to foot a hotel bill and scramble things the next day to get us on a different plane, it would have been the fastest, easiest, most reasonable solution for everyone involved, but they didn’t even consider it. That is what irritates me, and not even in an angry way just in an incredulous way.

But to summarize/repeat, this image people seem to have of someone who rushed back here to complain about his trip is entirely and thoroughly false. I did not post this to complain, only to share. I am not angry, I just was in the story.
Perhaps I could have made it clearer that everything in my post was a recollection of what happened as it happened and not a portrayal of my current disposition, but I didn’t give it my usual thoroughness in checking over because there wasn’t time. I wrote it up the day I got home and posted it the next day because that was when I got back online and I wanted to share the story while it was still topical, assuming my online friends would want to hear about my trip as my real life ones did.

Hopefully that’s where the confusion is coming from. I really thought it was clear, but if not I hope it is now.

[American Eagle]

Dude, stop with the insanely long posts! Nobody has time to spend their weekends reading through your drama.

I plan to bow out of this topic. bookworm, good luck on your endeavours to conjure up sympathy from the rest of the ToO.

[Shennifer]

bookworm, I'm sorry for the unnecessary delays you suffered while traveling. I hope your future travels go more smoothly.

Everyone else, stop antagonizing bookworm or we might have to read even longer posts from him

this has been a PSA

[jelly]

Hopefully that’s where the confusion is coming from. I really thought it was clear, but if not I hope it is now.

Life protip: it's not all about 'making yourself clear'. Nobody in this thread really cares for your endless justifications. You're being criticized for your arrogant attitude, not your story. If you don't think you have an arrogant attitude, then just laugh it off and focus on the future.

But as long as you remain so persistent about being right all the time, you're just digging a deeper hole for yourself.

[Jonathan]

Think about it... this will be a story you can tell the grand kids when they complain about how their hover board was leaking green smoke.

By far the best thing said in this thread.

And my own story: I'm from Minnesota. Snow isn't a big deal, but appearently it's a very big deal in Atlanta, where a dusting shut down the airport, and the entire city. And, I got two extra days off of school because of it (I don't even know how long it took to get home, the jet lag was so severe) Makes for a good story and such.

[Marvin D.]

So. Many. Words.

[Catspaw]

But as long as you remain so persistent about being right all the time, you're just digging a deeper hole for yourself.

Being right, or having his intentions perceived accurately? I know that I don't like it when people misunderstand what I meant by what I have said or done, especially if I meant nothing by what I said, but somebody else interpreted it as negative. Bookworm seems to feel that he didn't mean things the way that some people seemed to think he meant, so he wanted to clarify what he meant by what he said. It can be hard to tell the meaning behind the words sometimes online. Bookworm has tried to provide more detail so that people can understand why he was sharing. Just yesterday I realized that a coworker misunderstood something, so I went over later and explained. That way I didn't have to worry that she thought that I was offended, and if she was thinking that, now she doesn't have to worry that I was offended. Win-win. The difference between my story and bookworm's situation here is that my coworker nodded, smiled, and we had a brief, friendly conversation about the cause of the misunderstanding. That doesn't seem to have been the case here.


Can we really not just let somebody share their story without repeated critcisms of what they said about what happened to them? Topics like this really don't encourage others to share stories from their lives, if this is the general reaction. If there are more words than you want to read, then don't read the words, don't post anything, and click on something else. Other people choose how much they post or don't post. You choose what you read or don't read.

[bookworm]

Pre-post note: Please read the end of this post, if you are unwilling to read the whole thing, because it gives the explanation I’ve been trying to give but people have been ignoring. It should clear everything up, but only if people read it.

Dude, stop with the insanely long posts! Nobody has time to spend their weekends reading through your drama.

I can’t believe you even said this! There is no drama - you only think there is because if you just go ‘long post: skip’ you don’t get why there was a long post. If people read the long posts instead of assuming they know what they’re about, this could have been wrapped up days ago!

Good grief! I almost wish I never posted this, which is ridiculous because I shouldn’t feel sorry for sharing a story - that’s what we do here!

Please, everyone who has been refusing to hear me out, just read one more post. I will repeat where the misconceptions are one last, clear time.

bookworm, good luck on your endeavours to conjure up sympathy from the rest of the ToO.

Right here is the whole problem that’s going on!
I don’t want sympathy, that was never the intention of any of this! For some reason you all got that impression, and that’s what started this fiasco, with the continuation being people running with their initial assumptions and ignoring anything I said in subsequent posts.

You're being criticized for your arrogant attitude, not your story. If you don't think you have an arrogant attitude, then just laugh it off and focus on the future.

Laugh off that everyone thinks I’m an arrogant person? I am focusing on the future; my future will be tainted if people have a falsely conceived negative opinion of me! Why the heck do you think I do put so much effort into correcting misunderstandings when they arise? You think I want to have these endless debates with people who aren’t even listening to what I say?

Please, let me go over this once more, and be heard this time.

You're being criticized for your arrogant attitude, not your story.

Okay, I can understand this. The problem is, the attitude was something conceived from the story, which is all I posted. I don’t actually have the attitude, but I can see where the idea came from. From a misunderstanding of the intent of my post, not having it explicitly clear that it was all recollections from in the moment. However when I realized this, and attempted to address it because I finally saw the disconnect, no one listened!

But as long as you remain so persistent about being right all the time, you're just digging a deeper hole for yourself.

I can understand this as well, or at least what you meant by it, but as Catspaw points out, this is a furthering of the misconception people are having. I am not trying to be right about anything, because there’s nothing to be right about. All I’m doing now is trying to correct the pervasive misunderstanding, which isn’t working because people are ignoring it assuming I’m still on the original topic, thereby ignoring my posts, thereby making it impossible to resolve the misunderstanding because they are unaware the topic has changed.

If I did have an attitude of being horribly wronged by the airline, and I did post my story to complain and get sympathy, and was then confronted with people saying I shouldn’t be upset, and continued to insist on my justification of being angry now, then you’re absolutely correct!

But that is not what happened here.
Please, if you are still skipping over everything and read nothing else read this part!

I do not believe I was wronged by the airline. I did not post to complain, draw sympathy, or with any other motive whatsoever, but simply to share a story about what happened on my trip. My post was misinterpreted to be a rant from the present, not a recollection from the past, and thereby drew comments that I should let it go and shouldn’t be so angry - and they were absolutely right! What they didn’t understand was that I had let it go and wasn’t still angry! I however did not understand why they were saying these things, because I had yet to realize the misconception about my current attitude. So to me, what they were saying was that in my story, because I thought they realized it was a story as opposed to a rant, that even then in the heat of the moment I didn’t have a right to get angry. That upset me, because I found it arrogant of them to assume they would have been more controlled in my place, since I did do my best to roll with the punches and only broke after repeated and cumulative pressures. Because of this, I posted my justifications. Not for why I should still be angry now, because I was not anymore, but for why I was in the moment. However, because of the disconnect, they were seen as justification for now rather than then, leading to further rebuke, which led to further justifications. I finally realized what was happening and made an attempt to explain the disconnect, but by that time people were apparently so put off by how things looked from their end of the misunderstanding that they assumed the post was just more of the same and ignored it, thereby missing the important clarification that could have put this unnecessary drama to rest days ago.

In summary: Neither side was wrong in their part of the initial misunderstanding. If I had indeed meant what you thought I meant, you would have been right! The problem was in people refusing to hear out the explanation once the misunderstanding was finally noticed.

[American Eagle]

There was another flight option available, they could have given us that and there would be no issue, but they refused because they knew they could get away with it.

This statement isn't storytelling; you are saying that the airline intentionally acted unethically against you and sought to do you harm because they knew there would be no repercussions. If your complaint is true, you have a right to sue them. If your statement is untrue, they could sue you for libel. (That is, if you had actually named the airline. )

bookworm, I'm a business major who is obsessed with human rights, civil litigation and legal issues. I am passionate about defending the innocent, especially when they cannot defend themselves. After some consideration, I invested 30 minutes of my time into your story because I expected it to outrage me. You started by saying that the trip "was, without question, the worst travel experience I have ever had" and you said that part of you "is still absolutely furious." I was expecting to want to tear down the airline with my bare hands. The length of your post implied that it was going to be outrageous.

It wasn't.

Nothing in your post was particularity angering. You were delayed; you had to hurry through the airport; you had to deal with minimum wage employees who misunderstood the reason for your delay and didn't give you sympathy; your second-to-last flight was delayed due to safety concerns; you had to stay in a hotel room because you didn't have the chance to catch your final flight and the airline decided not to put you on the evening flight due to unknown reasons. Inconvenient, yes, but not outrageous.

Here's the deal: bookworm, you are a privileged individual who doesn't have standing to complain. Imagine that you have a rich friend and he says, "Some kid just threw a frisbee into my new Cadillac! Why can't people watch what they're freaking doing?!" That complaint falls on deaf ears because none of us can even afford a Cadillac. Similarly, I'm not very compassionate towards someone who had to stay in a hotel room... because they missed their return flight... from a two-week vacation. I would suffer innumerable delays for the opportunity to take my family on a vacation like you did. Please take a moment to consider the way your complaint may be perceived by people who cannot afford the luxuries you did.

[Marvin D.]

I may not wish to get the like button, but.

**LIKE AE'S POST**

[bookworm]

AE, that was a great post; thank you! We’re making progress here, at last both sides have drawn up clearly the points of interest.
I’m going to respond to them, please don’t take it the wrong way. Now that we’re finally having an actual dialogue, I’m just looking to continue it, not revert back to the back and forth of before.
As I said, I understand exactly what you’re saying now, I just want to ensure it goes the other way too.

There was another flight option available, they could have given us that and there would be no issue, but they refused because they knew they could get away with it.

This statement isn't storytelling; you are saying that the airline intentionally acted unethically against you and sought to do you harm because they knew there would be no repercussions.

Indeed. But again, those remarks, though presented as a summary statement from the present, were actually still intended to be reflective comments from the past, from the mindset of while the story was taking place. It’s absolutely not your fault for misinterpreting that part, it was due to ambiguous language on my part. At the time of the story, as a result of endless thing after thing going wrong, I was in a mindset that was even more cynical than usual. I’ve heard countless tales of airlines lacking customer service, especially the particular one we were flying with this trip, so I linked my experience to those. While it is true that there was no attempt made to accommodate our situation in a more reasonable manner, I cannot say with certainty it was a result of intentional malice toward us, that conclusion was a product of the emotions of the moment.

You started by saying that the trip "was, without question, the worst travel experience I have ever had" and you said that part of you "is still absolutely furious."

And both statements were absolutely true. I’ve had various inconveniences on many of my travels, as anyone does. But I have never in my life experienced an excursion so thoroughly and entirely marked with nonstop issues as this. That was what made me want to post about it! If it was just a common ‘flight was delayed’ or something of the like I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Everyone knows how those go. But again, I have never witnessed anything like this, this was something beyond even my pessimistic imagination. I couldn’t believe how everything ended up going down, as this was not just problem after problem, it was a clear chain of problem causing next problem. I found it an incredible story and assumed other people may as well, thus desiring to share it. As to the part about still being furious, again, ambiguous language for which I apologize. The ‘still’ was not meant to carry until the time of my posting, only to the end of my story. The entirety of my post was meant as a flashback, all commentary on my feelings being what they were in the moment. At the culmination of all the furor, recalling how every problem was linked together, I was still furious. I hadn’t had time to resume a big picture mindset yet.

The length of your post implied that it was going to be outrageous.

It wasn't.

I definitely need to address this one, because it’s been a constant theme here.
The length of my post implied absolutely nothing. As I said before, length reflects on the content of a post, not the intent. You can’t assume that because a post is long it’s going to be an outraged rant. The story was a long story, so it took a long post to tell - that’s all! And again, that was the point of telling it! Because it was such a long chain effect.
So it may be a common shortcut in forum readers to connect long posts with intense drama, but that doesn’t mean it is so. If I had a chain of perfect and wonderful things happen along my trip and wrote about those, it would have been just as long. It’s unfair that my post’s length seeded preconceptions about my intentions. I think that was definitely a big part in fueling the misunderstanding.

Nothing in your post was particularity angering.

Not to an outside observer, no. Not even to me, in hindsight. But to me in the moment, yes it absolutely was. Again, you have to keep in mind that this was a chain reaction I was going through, not just a pile of problems. If it was just an uncommonly large number of inconveniences along the way I would have become annoyed after a bit, but it wouldn’t have pushed me all the way to angry. It was because of how everything was linked together that finally did it; I was overwhelmed by the absurdity of what was happening all around me.

Here's the deal: bookworm, you are a privileged individual who doesn't have standing to complain.

Agreed! That’s the point, I wasn’t complaining. Now that I see the other side I can definitely understand where the impression came from, but that was never my intent or my mindset.

Thanks again for allowing clear dialogue here, now things can finally be smoothed out.

[Anna><>]

Once I almost wasn't let out of a country because they thought I was a minor and technically I was born in that country, but I barely even speak their language I don't know how they expected me to stay there... but fortunately I wasn't a minor and they let me out.

[Kait]

After some consideration, I invested 30 minutes of my time into your story because I expected it to outrage me. You started by saying that the trip "was, without question, the worst travel experience I have ever had" and you said that part of you "is still absolutely furious." I was expecting to want to tear down the airline with my bare hands. The length of your post implied that it was going to be outrageous.

It wasn't.

Nothing in your post was particularity angering. You were delayed; you had to hurry through the airport; you had to deal with minimum wage employees who misunderstood the reason for your delay and didn't give you sympathy; your second-to-last flight was delayed due to safety concerns; you had to stay in a hotel room because you didn't have the chance to catch your final flight and the airline decided not to put you on the evening flight due to unknown reasons. Inconvenient, yes, but not outrageous.

This was pretty much what I was going to say.

It looked like just another page in the ole air travel book to me.

Which isn't to say it isn't frustrating or stressful ... these things always are. But unless they had made you pay for your hotel bill or something, it seems fairly normal.