The Cost Of Forgiveness

Spring Break was last week and we headed to Atlanta. We were smart, we booked our tickets to fly out at noon so that we wouldn’t have to freak out on our kids to rush out of the house. We got to the airport and I was stunned and amazed as all of my family made it through security almost as quickly as I can….and without incident. (Let’s not talk about that time that a 4 year old Miss G tried to sneak three lovely shades of nail polish, 2 bottles of hand santizer and one bottle of my Chanel cologne through prompting a special search of her Dora backpack by “authorties”, shall we?)

Anywho, having checked in the night before and having arrived at the airport an hour and a half ahead of time, we headed to the gate with our “confirmed” boarding passes in hand to get our seat assignments.

That’s when it got tricky.

See, apparently the word “confirmed” does not actually mean you know, “CONFIRMED” as in, “Why yes, we do have a seat waiting for you on the plane which is why we lured you here with the word CONFIRMED“.

After watching the final stragglers board the plane and realizing that perhaps I had misinterpreted the word confirmed, I finally turned to the gate agent and said, “We aren’t getting on this plane are we?”

Such a stupid question.

It was at that moment I realized the standby list had 65 (SIXTY FIVE!!!) people in front of us and since this wasn’t the airline I normally fly and have status on, there wasn’t a chance in hell we were going anywhere. The gate agent whose been very busy click click clicking and avoiding eye contact with me finally has no choice but to look at me at which point I completely and totally lost my ever loving mind. “Are you KIDDING me? What is this CONFIRMED b.s.? We checked in LAST NIGHT!!“.

Could I have been nicer given it really wasn’t this slightly bald clickety click  mans fault? Yes. Could I have remembered my two children were standing on either side of me and I could present a better example of how to deal with issues like this? Possibly. But it just wasn’t going to happen that day. Especially not after the slightly balding clickety click typing agent, lowered his glasses to the end of his nose, took a deep breath, sighed and said, “Let me tell you how this works….”

Oh no….

“On Spring Break, we purposely overbook. We gamble…and sometimes we lose.”

At which point Mr. C piped up and said, “Oh mister, do I ever feel sorry for you…”

“You lose?  Do you really? Because I’m the one standing here in an airport with my family holding a confirmed ticket that I thought meant CONFIRMED CONFIRMED not ‘Hey welcome to Vegas would you like to stick your ticket in the slot machine and see if it spits a seat out?!?!?’  AAARRRGH!!!”

I was summarily sent back to my seat with a tsk tsk of the hand so that the gate agent could break the news to the next fool in line holding his own confirmed seat pass as we all watched the plane taxi off.   It was at this point The Man and Mr. C took to complaining loudly, I took to facebook and twitter and Miss G took to peaceful protesting.

I’m happy to say my little protester worked her magic because despite being told we would not be leaving at least until 4:00 and probably not until the next day, one hour later we were called to the counter by the supervisor who had been called in to stop the little “situation” we were creating, told to board the next flight and handed 4 four hundred dollar vouchers for our problems.

SIXTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS.

Hell to the yes.

So I guess the moral to this story is threefold. First of all, you sometimes have to go jihad crazy on people who fail at customer service to get attention.   Secondly, while I am somewhat easy, I am not cheap and I can in fact be bought for just a little under two grand.   (What…you say I’m still bitter?  I tell you there are exactly sixteen hundred reasons I’m not saying the name of the airline here.)     And third, if possible, bring a very cute little girl with all her markers skilled in the art of peaceful protesting….because a sweet little face can work wonders on the heart of a complaint hardened  supervisor.