Things Don't Work Very Well Anymore

September 25, 1996

It's a sure sign of advancing age when you start telling people that things used to be better in the old days. Whether they were or not, nobody wants to hear about it unless they're older than you are; after all, you can't go back to the old days except in your dreams. And things probably weren't better in the old days anyway (as so many of Bob Dole's critics have been reminding him lately); we have a tendency to forget the bad things, gloss over the minor inconveniences, and exaggerate whatever good things did happen.

Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that this road-warrior lifestyle used to be a lot smoother. I'm not talking about the big things -- planes falling from the sky, lost baggage, flights getting cancelled, hotel desk clerks telling you they've never heard of your confirmed reservation -- though it certainly doesn't seem to have gotten much better lately. No, I'm talking about the little things, the minor annoyances, the things you can't really complain to your boss or your spouse about, but which nevertheless set your teeth on edge. A week of such repeated, minor annoyances is enough to put even the most sweet-tempered traveler in a permanent foul mood.

It's more noticeable for some road-warriors than others, depending on their itinerary and the number of different planes, trains, hotels, and other travel-service providers they have to cope with. If a road-warrior's trip consists of one round-trip flight from JFK to LAX, and a week-long stay in a suite at the Beverly Hilton, what could go wrong? But if the week-long trip involves five different flights on three different airlines, as well as five nights in five different hotels, then lots of things can go wrong. Nothing catastrophic, but enough, in the aggregate, to make one wish for the good old days, even if they weren't so good.

F'rinstance: a 7 AM flight from LaGuardia to Denver (or, for that matter, from anywhere to anywhere) is not a particularly great time for a flight, for it usually means that you've had to drag yourself out of bed at 5 AM to get to the airport on time. But if it's hard for the passengers, it's also hard for the crew and the flight attendants; on this particular trip, the first evidence of things not working out quite right was the announcement from the gate agent that our departure would be delayed a few minutes because the flight attendants had arrived in New York quite late the night before (delayed because of a thunderstorm) and were required by government regulations to have a minimum number of hours of sleep before being sent back to duty.

Now if it were the pilot and copilot they were talking about, I would have agreed enthusiastically. But since it was flight attendants, who are grumpy anyway at this hour, I wasn't so sympathetic. And since it was a United Airlines flight, I figure they would have been grumpy no matter how many hours of sleep they got; faithful readers of this journal will perhaps remember my open letter to United Airlines when a long flight from New York to Manila went awry. But in any case, the "things used to be better" part of my addled brain kept repeating: didn't this kind of situation happen in the old days, too? And when the flight attendants weren't available for the flight, didn't the airlines have a backup crew ready to fill in? Maybe so, maybe not; who can tell?

Of course, since it was United Airlines, I could confidently expect a few more things to go wrong. I had used my enormous stash of flight upgrade coupons to wangle an upgrade to first class, and I was looking forward to a good breakfast; after all, who has the time or energy to eat breakfast at home when preparing for a 7 AM flight? But as luck would have it, I was sitting in the last row of first class; and when the tired, grumpy flight attendant reached me row, she informed me that my menu selection was cheese omelette, or cheese omelette; the last of fruit-and-cereal breakfasts was gone. "Of course, I could go back into economy class and see if they have any cereal left over," she said, wrinkling her nose, "but you have to realize it would be served without any plates or silverware." I opted for the cheese omelette; somehow I had the impression that the flight attendant would have found a way to guarantee that there was no silverware or dishes if I had pressed the case.

My sanity and modicum of civilized behavior was preserved by the fact that did have coffee for all of us in first class. But coffee has a way of working itself through my system pretty quickly, and if it's part of the very first food I have in the morning, it has a way of creating a powerful urge to rush toward the nearest bathroom. Alas, that wasn't in the first-class cabin today: for reasons never explained (and why bother asking for an explanation, anyway?), the first-class toilet was "out of service." Thus, back through the cattle-car economy section, climbing over obstacles posed by other passengers, food carts, straggling children, and loose feet and legs in the aisle -- only to discover there were 6 people in line ahead of me for the two remaining toilets.

I don't want to give the impression that United is the only airline that suffers from such incidents of "things just don't work the way they used to." On the return portion of this trip -- from Missoula, Montana through Salt Lake City, and then on to New York -- I had a similar series of minor hassles with Delta Airlines. Arriving in Missoula well ahead of the flight and finding myself second in line in the first-class check-in lane (once again, courtesy of the huge stash of flight-upgrade coupons), I nevertheless found myself waiting for a full 15 minutes while the exasperated couple ahead of me tried to find a solution for the dilemma Delta had presented to them: cancellation of their connection from Salt Lake to Cincinnati. I don't know why anyone would willingly fly to Cincinnati in the first place, but the couple eventually accepted the dismal fate of flying to Los Angeles and then taking a red-eye back east.

Meanwhile, while trying to focus my attention on anything but the aforementioned couple, I happened to look up on the display board where the outbound flights were listed; as you can imagine, there aren't many from Missoula, so my own flight stood out pretty clearly. It was scheduled to leave ten minutes earlier than the "official" time, which puzzled me: delays are common, of course, but why would an airline decide to leave ten minutes early? The explanation, when I finally reached the ticket agent to check in and ask for details, was simple: my flight was going to make an unscheduled stop in Helena.

Helena? Where on earth is that? Well, it happens to be one of the few other towns in Montana with a population of more than five people and three sheep. And it's not really too far out of the way to Salt Lake City -- or so the ticket agent said, as he smoothly assured me that it would only delay my arrival in Salt Lake by 5-10 minutes. My original flight plan had included a layover of a little over an hour between the arrival of the flight from Missoula, and the departure of my connecting flight to New York. No problem, the agent assured me, no problem at all.

I never did get a straight answer of why we had to detour to Helena, but I assume it was because another Delta flight had been delayed or cancelled. And I'm really happy for all the Helena-bound people (as well as the ones who got on the plane in Helena, in order to keep on going to Salt Lake) whose plans weren't completely screwed. But as for my plans: well, you guessed it. We didn't arrive 5-10 minutes late, we arrived more like 45 minutes late. And as luck would have it, I had to run from the last gate in one terminal to the last gate in the next terminal in order to catch my connecting flight. I made it with at 5 minutes to spare, but I couldn't help thinking to myself, "Things just don't work very well any more."

But having boarded the New York flight, there was one more such problem: the captain got on the loudspeaker and cheerfully announced that we'd be delayed "for just a few minutes" because the on-board computer had broken down. Indeed, the computer had already been replaced, the captain assured us; the tiny delay now was simply the result of some paperwork being finished up. Well, it was more like 30 minutes before we finally got in line on the runway; but once again we were told not to worry. "There's a stronger-than-expected tail wind this evening," the captain announced, "so even though we're a little late taking off, we'll be able to make up the lost time, and we should arrive pretty much on schedule." Not that we could have done a whole lot about it anyway; by the time we got the news, we were already airborne. And of course, we didn't make up the lost time; we arrived in New York 30 minutes late. Not a major catastrophe, by any means; indeed, not even late enough to complain about to one's spouse with any hope of a sympathetic response.

At least the Delta flight crews were pretty good-natured and friendly, in contrast to the sour-pusses at United. Indeed, when I got on the flight in Missoula, one of the flight attendants said to me, "Hey, didn't we just see you last night?" And indeed she had: I had taken a late-evening flight up to Missoula, arriving at 11 PM the night before; and barely more than 12 hours later, I was taking an outbound flight with the same crew. By itself, that might not seem like a significant incident; however, I dealt with the same agent at Avis when I picked up my car at 11:15 PM, and again when I returned it at 1 PM the next afternoon. And the hotel desk clerk who checked me in at 11:30 PM on my arrival night was the same one who checked me out at 6:30 AM the next morning.

So maybe the problem is that we're all working too hard, taking flights and renting cars and trying to earn a living in the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning, when we should all be home asleep. Maybe that's why we're all so tired and grumpy; maybe that's why things just don't seem to work as well any more.