United

I feel sorry for anyone who has to provide customer service to me:

1. After I’ve had 4 or 5 cups of coffee
2. When I’d rather be home
3. And especially when I happen to be in an airplane boarding line, where I seem to lose my pleasant disposition mind.  Honest to god, if I acted all the time like I do in airplane boarding lines…..well…..I’d be the Big Tall Bitch my employees refer to me as [ummmm…..uh-oh].  As an A-list/premier/silver member of every airline in the country I think I must live in a perpetual state of platinum envy [always the bridesmaid and never the first class bride] and it brings out the WORST in me.

Which brings us to Friday’s little travelogue.  I mean…here I was, all excited to be taking my first United flight since achieving grand poo-bah [i.e., silver] status on United, only to draw the gate agent who:

• has yet to complete her how-not-to-be-a-bitch-to-your-customers training 
• is in the midst of an IRS audit [oh wait, that’s me.  And yet I wasn’t the one who started this bitch-down]
• couldn’t get her (grand)kids to listen to her this morning and is going to take it out on everybody who doesn’t appear to be aging as badly – and by that I mean the passenger with the oxygen tank.  [Whatever.  She was mean.]

Let’s just say that she and the Soup Nazi and can vie for keynote speaker at the next Occupational Nazi conference. 

Besides, who knew they could actually enforce that sign that says “your bag must fit in here”??  I routinely walk past hundreds of those models guarded by TSA agents with GUNS and I never give my bigger-than-most-Samsonite-luggage-from-the-70s rollerbag a second thought. Besides, I thought those models were a suggestion….especially for us silver-type elites.  Seriously, I can almost always cram that bastard into the carryon compartment, usually without even cracking the plastic housing of the overhead.

I probably should have known I was in trouble when she made the early-boarding gentlemen count his oxygen tank and pillbox as all of his allotted carryons – say goodbye to your fanny-pack, poor guy.  When she made the Marine check his completely collapsible duffel bag, I should have just called it a day for my own person-sized luggage.

But nooooo….I thought I could just roller on by.  “Ma’am, does your bag fit in that guide over there?”  Now….you know which guide I’m talking about…..the metal skeleton thing that is a fraction of the size of the actual overhead.  Like some smart-ass was in charge of building enforcement models that day.  I don’t even think it’s built to SCALE nevermind actual size.  Seriously…..my rollerbag didn’t’ fit in, on or near that damn model.  “Give me a break lady, my backpack wouldn’t fit in that stupid thing.”  Ummmmmm, WRONG $^!%@&!’in ANSWER!  I damn near lost everything I own to that Gate Gaddafi.  After a hasty, profanity-laden repacking of my backpack to remove some of the more “bulgey” items, I negotiated the release carryon of at least my (now anorexic) backpack.  But not before I sat off to the side for 15 minutes reorganizing every single compartment in reach while snarkily saying – “What about HIS bag, I bet it doesn’t fit either.  Or is he Platinum??” about 15 times.  [As I said, boarding gates & my better judgment don’t seem to be well acquainted with one another.]  I’m probably lucky I didn’t get jumped in the exit row by my fellow passengers. 

And I may have escaped with my power-cordless laptop [power cords are very bulgey], but boy was I steamed.  I considered several insurgent tactics to get back at United, such as “forgetting” that my medication was in my recently confiscated checked bag.  Then after they frantically scrambled to get my unjustly checked bag from the bowels of the plane, I could jauntily retrieve the Emergen-C from my suitcase. Ha, ha, ha.  But all of my ridiculous plots ended with me spending the day with TSA while my bag returned to San Diego, so I just shut up.    

All I can say is United must be bonusing their employees on checked baggage quotas [and Jessica Tandy is gunning for the President’s Circle], because I was just one of many disgruntled poo-bah types shuffling baggage-less down the aisles [even after I quit ratting out other passengers].  And while the overhead compartments in First Class looked crammed with bulbous, contraband luggage, Economy was a ghost town of half-empty storage.  The flight attendants actually requested we put our coats up there “so it doesn’t look like so much wasted space. Ha, ha.”

By the end of the flight….I had finally calmed down [or maybe the caffeine just wore off]…UNTIL they opened the Completely.  Empty.  Overhead.  Compartment.  Above.  Me.