July 27, 2012

Am supposed to be writing in Sligo, but am not. DJ dropped me off, and I got to the check-in desk, where the man said, “Newark? It’s been cancelled.” He said it was weather, but if there was bad weather over Newark it affected only one carrier bringing flights from only one point of origin. I began to cobble together a new route to Newark (for there was plenty of time, and the weather had miraculously cleared), when I was told that United had cancelled the Newark to Shannon part, too, figuring I wouldn’t be able to make it. They had rebooked me for Saturday, two days later, seeing how their flights the next day were full. How I was supposed to know this I don’t know, for notification was not sent to me in any form. I was determined to get to Ireland that day, and they did try to find something, but I realized they were looking only at United flights. I went to the Delta guy at the next desk, and he found me a way (laborious, but acceptable), but he said United would have to assign the ticket to them. United would not do this. The man at the desk said, “I am not allowed to sign this ticket over to another carrier.” So, after arbitrarily cancelling a flight and then lying about it, after denying me passage I had paid for, they also refused the chance to address the situation by going with another carrier. I almost flat-out bought the other ticket, but I had twenty minutes to make all the choices, and finally I collapsed and let it be. United Airlines is the most hellishly incompetent and gleefully anti-customer corporation I have ever dealt with. Not one leg of one journey with them has been without mishap (all of them but one related to stupidity and bad practice) They know they have a captive audience and they don’t care how badly they play before us. The icing on the cake is that we’re supposed to be the ones to cleave to a certain level of decorum. I was not the only person stranded yesterday, of course. A family from Finland was trying to get home on the same Asheville to Newark flight. United had re-booked them, too, the wife and the kids, but they had somehow left out the father, who had no seat and no reservation, and all flights were full.  The Finnish father was a little shrill, I grant, but not in excess of the situation. The United staff gathered together behind the desk and bellowed at him how he was being abusive, and the only way that would lead was to jail.  I took a taxi home (with tip, $60). The taxi driver was one of those skinny rednecks you see in the TV shows, who had to finish messing with his. . . something in the front seat. . . before we could get going. On the way I learned the rather intricate status of his and his wife’s relationship. She is a check-out girl at Wal-mart, and he is ashamed that her paycheck is bigger than his, and he loves her dearly and he takes responsibility for the troubles between them, and if she just gives him another chance all will be well. I was glad to know all this. Home, I did check the United webpage for my reservation, discovering that I had been booked after a fashion, but had not actually been assigned seats. I followed the directions for getting seats for myself, some of which required an extra payment. The website would not let me pay those fees, instructing me that I had to fill in a valid state on the line provided, which I had done several times already. So, I dug around until I found a phone number, and after a nine minute hold, got that done, I think.

The surprising thing was how much this took out of me. I was so happy in the morning heading to the airport. Buoyant All was so well. When I got home I had to lie down. I did force myself to go to a movie, Batman, but the experience is dim and dull to me, and I came home and slept some more. Made some sort of mistake–I think it was, having not eaten all day, buying a couple of pieces of chicken from Ingall’s after they had set hours in their own grease–and was violently ill through the night, vomiting both in my mouth in sleep and copiously into the toilet. This morning it is as though I had not slept. I have no interest in going to Ireland at all. That is gone. Admitting the absurdity of the feeling, I still feel this all was a calculated cruelty, pointless and wasteful. I hide in my room like a beaten child.