Tags
Anger, Complaints, Delays, Hotel, Irritation, Perception, Satisfaction, Time, Travel
I’m at the airport in Anchorage. The woman standing next to me gets out her phone. She is visibly irritated.
“Yes, I’m waiting here for the shuttle. Another gentleman is waiting too. There are three of us. We called half an hour ago and you said it would be 15 minutes. You told the other gentleman you’d be here any minute. It’s been 30. We’ve already called you twice and nothing’s happened. We’re just waiting…”
…a group of at least half a dozen people walk up and pushes between us just as the airport shuttle arrives and opens its door right in front of them.
“Oh, he’s here already. Boy are they fast”
northierthanthou 
P.S. I can’t vouch for the exact words, but that is roughly how it went down.
Good thing these people weren’t travelling with me on a recent trip from LA to London. Short story is two broken planes, reflighting, an overnight hotel stay, half a dozen emails to the people I was visiting in another time zone to tell them what was happening, another 4 hour delay and a rescheduling of the car to the wrong day. There were so many delays I actually did not know what day it was when I finally got to my destination.
Airports are unbeatable when it comes to observing human behavior under stress 🙂
I’m on a short trip to California. My shuttle experience has been good so far. But is is very aggravsting when it goes off the rails.
I had the opposite experience in the Netherlands earlier this year. I thought I was going to miss my flight so I was grateful when I got to check-in and they not only told me it was late (whew) but also gave me a voucher for lunch.
I flew from London, Gatwick, to Izmir, Turkey a couple of years ago. This involved changing in Istanbul for a local plane. We’d already booked a taxi from the airport, but when we arrived, there was no sign of it.
We waited…and waited, went out of the teminal in case the driver was there. He wasn’t. I went back in and was obviously looking stressed because another driver asked me who I was waiting for, and my name.
The nice man then rang up and found my driver, who had gone to the International arrivals, but coming from Istanbul, we were at the Domestic arrivals.
All was well, and we arrived at our destination, but a bit later than we’d planned. Still, we had a good holiday in the end.
Different perspective, Different life !
I was stuck at the Airport outside Reykjavik for two days a few years ago..the worst snowstorm of the century. LOL