Candid Camera land?

Did you ever have one of those moments where you look around and try to find the hidden Candid Camera? Yeah, I thought you did.

So, following closely on the heels of the irony of a customer satisfaction survey arriving from our favorite appliance manufacturer... I get the joy of travelling on September 11th which conjurs up all sorts of thoughts, moments, ideas.

But I should have been less worried about flying and much more worried about not actually being able to get on the plane. It went something like this:

Pick up colleague, leave for airport.
Arrive at airport, go to gate, 40 minutes to spare.
Listen to gate agent say "there's a ground restriction in Philly, no flights allowed in or out, the soonest departure time (for a 1:45 flight) is 4:30.
The math is easy, we miss connnections.
I get online and look up timetables, she calls corporate travel center.
We decide to fly direct to an alternate location and drive the rest.

we meet White Shirt Guy.

He is standing behind the counter, avoiding eye contact, pretending not to see us or anyone else.
I catch his eyes after a few minutes.
I ask "can you please try to book us to this alternate location?"
He types, slowly. types some more, more slowly. Looks up and says:
"I can't reroute you to an alternate destination. You weren't going there, I can't do it"

I'm speechless, when have airlines ever prevented reroutes, heck they involuntarily reroute you if they choose!

I turn around, look at my colleague, she is speechless.
I say to him "you can't reroute us?"
He says "no", shaking his head side to side.

We leave, stunned. My colleague checks with the travel agency and is put on hold. I scan the airport screens for info on the alternate flight we wanted, it is conveniently located 2 gates away and we take off for the gate.

The nice lady behind the counter laughs when we tell her what happened. She rebooks us.

We are set.

As she hands over the ticket, White Shirt Guy walks over perplexed, I'm sure.

We proceed to wait and wait and wait as flight after flight around us is cancelled, rerouted or delayed indefinitely. We people watch, quite funny in fact. One of the people we watch... that's right, White Shirt Guy. in the next 4 hours he avoids all eye contact with anyone and only helps those who corner him into it. We watched as person after person walked away empty handed (ok, only FOUR people in a gateway of overwhelmingly unhappy passengers could even get his help). In many cases we watched that all too familiar head shaking, I even saw him say "I can't help you, please go to another line".

No shit folks.

He walked from gate to gate, walked down some gangways, pretended to call people. Heck, he even got on the intercom a few times but his voice was 'mute', seriously. he was freaky.

We finally left for our new destination 5 hours after we planned, but heck, our flight and the one bound for Charlotte were the only two that left all day. After a few more hours of driving... home sweet home in ... you guessed it... the Not-so-holiday-inn... mold and everything.

Oh, and the desk clerk who was all of 12 (ok, I exagerate, he LOOKED all of 12) asked my (female) travel mate and I if we were "together" (not in the business sense) and would we like a king room. When we said we weren't together, holy crap he was all over the situation with pickup lines... I'm gonna need a shower after this trip, eeeewwwwwwh.

(ps, no leg creepage on the flight, awesome folks, awesome)
(on some unrelated news, I did have the good chance to be able to catch up with my friend in the hospital, cancer has been ruled out, but nothing so far rule in. Prediction is much more time, perhaps 2 more weeks there, it's awful for her and her family...)