John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Can You Relate?

Can you relate?

You know the feeling you get when you oversleep because you were sure you would wake up early enough on your own without a wake-up call to make your flight home from a business trip in a city you’ve never been in before?

And then rush frantically getting ready only to realize you didn’t pack a fresh change of clothes for today and have to wear the same shirt you wore on Monday because it’s somehow less wrinkled than the shirts you wore Tuesday or Wednesday and you packed your Dopp kit before shaving but pull out the razor and try to shave enough so it doesn’t look like you didn’t shave?

And then you rush through the lobby hoping to find a cup of coffee but they are out and you see a guy from your conference who wants to talk and exchange business cards and you are too flustered to tell him you overslept and are rushing to the airport so you just pretend like you were getting a call just at that moment and had to take it outside and couldn’t talk to him?

And then can’t find your car for 6 minutes in the hotel parking lot because you wanted to save money by parking yourself instead of using the valet service and can’t recall where you parked last night after you had a flat tire and it took you an hour to drive 5 miles back to your hotel because you couldn’t use your GPS since your iPhone had died—again?

And then you get to the rental car drop off and are told you didn’t buy coverage for the tire and will have to pay for it and will also be charged for running about 5 tolls that you didn’t have change for because you refused to use the EZPass pre-paid service Budget offered you on Monday?

And as you watch 3 employees not be able to answer—or even try very hard to answer—a few simple question about how to deal with the toll violations you’ll be receiving you think to yourself how much time they are wasting and how they aren’t working very hard very hard at all and seem to be wasting a lot of time.. And you start to feel mad because your tax dollars are being wasted on slackers like these even though Budget Rental Car isn’t part of the federal government?

But you start to sympathize with the Tea Party movement and can see yourself being one on days like today but then think to yourself, “Wow. I guess Tea Party types feel this upset all of the time” and realize you might be able to also if things don’t improve soon.

And then you are a little rude to the driver of the rental car shuttle because you are about to miss your plane and are embarrassed when you realize you don’t know which airline you are on but “think” it’s United.

But it’s not and United takes 20 minutes to figure that out since they have no idea what you are talking about before United’s ticket agent tells you that you are actually on USAir and you rush down to the USAir ticket counter and an attractive young lady is talking on the phone to another customer while you impatiently wait to tell her your flight departs at 9:19 and it is already 9:02….and when she does get off the phone she decides to try out some new boundary techniques for talking to rude customers like you.

And refuses to check if your flight is running late or offering you any ticket credit since it is “You fault” that you are late—and says this several times with a smirk on her face until you snap and tell her loudly in front of another customer and a co-worker that “You are not going to put up with this anymore and that people should not treat other people like this” and you try to run down a list of things she’s done wrong but can’t think of anything, really, except that smirk, and so you finish your unintelligible mini-tirade by adding, “And doing it all with that insulting smirk on your face!” and you realize that now both the other customer and her colleague are watching you and smirking along with her and you realize that they know that even you know how ridiculous you sound and aren’t intimidating anyone and, frankly, are too old and too short for this kind of rant but that it’s too late to stop and so you just hope the “Smirk” comment at the end sounds impressive.

And then you try to buy a new ticket from United but they have no flights out but are at least nice about it since they saw the episode several counters over with USAir but you do find a ticket available on Southwest that leaves in an hour later and buy the ticket and then wait endlessly in airport security and are tempted to ask the TSA guard how many finger nail clippers and 5 oz bottles of body lotion they’ve confiscated this week from would-be terrorist but don’t because you had just made a jerk of yourself just a few minutes earlier and want to apologize to the US Air ticket agent but are already though security and really, really, really want a cup of coffee and see a Starbucks sign and walk faster until you realize there is another sign below it saying, “Coming soon?”

And then you go into a gift shop that sells coffee and are trying to write about all this to post on Facebook to relieve some of the stress you are feeling but inadvertently delete the first two paragraphs and put down your phone as an older, chipper Chinese Barista is waving funnily at you saying in her broken English “Hello, Hello, Hello, sir.”

And you smile a little because she doesn’t understand the social cues of your culture for “Do not be nice to me; I am brooding now” and then a young Indian fellow Barista is embarrassed she can’t understand your order and looks down in shame while laughing to herself—but not smirking.

And you start to feel a little lighter as you put the condiments in your coffee and walk out but notice a new book cover sporting Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mug with a contrite and humbled expression on his face but the book is titled something like, “My unbelievable real life story.” And you can hear his thick Austrian accent as you read the title to yourself and think to yourself he really does have a pretty amazing life story. And you realize that no matter how bad your morning was, your year won’t be as bad as Arnold’s was last year.

And that we are all really doing about the best we can with what we have— and that s**t does happen and sometimes happens in streams—but even then it’s really no big deal. Not really.

And you sit down at your gate and recharge your electronics and think about how nice the person at AAA was last night and how helpful the person was at Southwest and that the people at Budget Rental Car were probably on break and weren’t trying to be difficult.

And as you are board your flight you notice a prominent sign on the side of the plan saying, “Wireless Available” and that wireless service wasn’t available on the flight you booked on the original flight on USAir or United or whatever because you asked when you booked and were told no. And you think to yourself, “Maybe my luck is changing today….and despite my tumultuous morning, maybe, just maybe, today is going to be another lucky day for me after all.”

If you answered “Yes, you can relate” then all that there is left for me to do is chuckle along with you, pat you on the back (virtually) and say, “Really? Oh my gosh, me too! Just this morning!” And hope that the airborne wireless service is working.

Note: The wireless service is working. I am posting this at 10,000 feet. And am feeling like a pretty lucky guy.