I am breaking one of my own rules about blogging this morning. I am writing while I am MAD. I have always felt that the soft voice turns away wrath. Dealing with people of all ilks and stations was a large part of my professional life, both in and after the Army. I learned young, by observation and by intense teaching from the Chief, that people who are screamers turn off their audience. If you scream every time you are upset, subordinates will disregard anything you say in a normal tone of voice. They wait for the scream to know you mean it. I have found that if you lower your voice, people have to listen harder. And when you establish this as your operating procedure, the subs learn that a lower voice is saying something they REALLY WANT to hear. And if you are a soft spoken person and something upsets you to the point where you have to raise your voice...everyone listens. I digress. I am mad.
The Hyperborean Wanderer, my oldest son, a senior NCO in the Army, is right now in Dallas at the airport. He is on his way home from Iraq on his "mid-tour" leave. Home is in Killeen, right outside Fort Hood. He has been gone for nine months (apparently the Army doesn't know how to divide). Life Happens, his wife, didn't tell the kids that daddy was coming today. When HBW called from Dallas and said he was on a flight in an hour or so, LH made arrangements with teachers to bring daddy into the classroom to surprise the kids. Then she got another call.
The flight that HBW was booked on was cancelled. The noon flight got filled up and he couldn't get on it. The next flight isn't until 1630 (that's 4:30 pm for those who are not Europeans or military minded). Disgusted but not defeated, he told the airline folks to get his bags, he could rent a car and be home before the 4:30 plane started loading. He was informed that it would take at least two hours to get his bags out of the bins. To add insult to injury, rental agencies at the Dallas airport will charge an outrageous fee for one way rentals. So at last contact, HBW will have to wait for a 4:30 flight and waste almost a full day of leave sitting in an airport just a hundred and some miles from home. LH is frozen in place until she hears from him again, or she would be enroute to pick him up as we read and write.
Okay. I have vented and in the process, calmed down a bit. Having spent a little time involved in airports and such, I know that this is not a terrible story, not all that unusual, probably not even worth the phone call to the airline president. But what frustrates me is that no one in the whole mess seemed interested in helping this soldier get home. Everyone has their public face on, got the company line memorized, not willing to step out of their plastic mold to even attempt to give him a hand. I bet a dollar to a donut hole that if the gate agent had asked the boarding passengers if anyone would be willing to give up their seat to help this soldier get home, that there would be more than one or two who would pony-up.
I spent some time on the ranch when I was a kid, I remember what happened when the breeder bulls were called in to "service" a cow. So the concept of "Customer Service" is nothing new to me...I'd just like to give a little of that "service" back to some folks at the airport in Dallas...and anywhere else where our military folks are getting kicked to the curb.
Okie-dokie: it is a few hours later, HBW should be motoring into his own driveway shortly. The drama continued through the rental car desk but finally resolved into a solution that he could live with and no one on the opposing side had to die...although for a moment or two it was a close call. The all important thing is that he be home and dry and have a good vacation with LH and the Things. American Airlines, in case you're interested