United…The Don't Care Air

(In support of all the people who were recently “inconvenienced” by United Airlines in the highly publicized mechanical problems stranding customers, I am reposting an essay I wrote about our similar experience.)

United…The Don’t Care Air. I submitted that statement to United Airlines management as a suggestion for their new motto, after experiencing why they can no longer say, “Fly the Friendly Sky’s of United.”  I’ve flown numerous airlines and experienced my share of problems that delayed or cancelled my flights, but after the second debacle with United and their piss-ant-we-don’t-care-attitude, I am DONE.

In early December, we were traveling home through Denver, which was in the middle of a major snowstorm.  A United employee at our origination airport responded to this pre-holiday crisis by closing the customer service counter at 1:30 p.m. saying he will not help anyone else in line because his shift was over. When customers asked if someone else was taking over, the man said “nope.” (I refuse to say which airport on the grounds next time I fly there; I will be subjected to a body cavity search in retaliation.) But I will say the next man in line was a serviceman in uniform trying to get back on time to his base. We asked the employee to at least help him, and he gave us a dirty look and said, “No!”

At a nearby gate podium the worker (I should say employee as he was not even attempting to work) walked away, without saying a word, never to return, without helping anyone. Are you freaking kidding me!  Two hours later, there was still no one at that counter or the gate and the travelers’ debacle, which would culminate in the cluster at Denver International Airport, was on. What kinds of dumb asses are running these airports and airlines?  No wonder the every day airport working stiff behaves like a snot-nosed teenager on a power trip when those in charge of policies don’t have the brains God gave a wooden duck.  I apologize to all the cute wooden ducks I just insulted, but you must admit you are too dumb to dive when a hunter shoots at you.

In the end, the United employees in our origination city ran away and hid so they didn’t have to talk to soon-to-be-stranded customers. We were literally being herded to Denver, where tens of thousands of us would be held in cow pens (they called them gates) until we were shipped off to our final market.  Just slaughter me now.

Finally arriving in the snow encrusted Denver we tried to board our flight on the second-leg of our journey. We and eight other people were not allowed on the plane.  We had boarding passes, but the gatekeeper bumped us to put on some standbys (and we learned they were the standbys at the bottom of the list).  I can only assume they were her friends or family, or someone slipped her a bribe.  She laughed, literally laughed, at all our open-mouthed faces and said, “It’s weather, too bad, I don’t have to do anything for you.”  Weather…my chocolate-ice-cream-eating fat ass!!!!  Thank you very much United, for another candidate for employee-of-the-year.  Are Human Resources training with the employee handbook from a P.O.W. camp?  I’m telling you, these Gestapo employees scared the Beetlejuice right out of me.

Five minutes later Darth Gater, smirked at us as she entered her code in the employee lounge door and walked in. Those of us who were standing in the 4-hour long customer service line can tell you the code to get in the employee lounge the next time you are stuck in Denver, as the Gate Nazi entered her code where we all could see it. By the way TSA, you might want to recode that door, as I am pretty sure I saw a billboard on I-70 showing the code and location.

Now we were stuck, in a long line, in a snowbound city instead of laying over in a nice warm bed at our daughter’s house until it was clear to fly again. Thanks, United!

Since George and I were stranded we decided to conduct a scientific study, which involved notes on toilet paper, and beer chasers. For two days we moved from gate to gate watching and listening. We found travelers to be polite, fun, tired, drunk (what else is there to do) and while they hated being stranded they knew you couldn’t do anything about it.  The gatekeepers were the polar opposite. And should all be transferred to the Poles…North and South, not Krakow and Warsaw. They were curt at best and evil at worst.  My deepest sympathy (insert sarcastic tone here) to the poor, overworked, gatekeeper that was forced to endure the travelers from Russia who did not understand how “our system” worked.  The Russians were polite, but confused, and Zuul The Gatekeeper was rude from his first breath and told them, “I do not care, rent a car and drive to your destination.”  The U.N. should hire that guy.

If your panties are up your who-haw wanting to defend the numerous badly behaved gatekeepers, save the saliva…I know they had to deal with some assholes. I also know there are great employees, and we found an awesome lady who helped us. (Guess what…she DIDN’T work for United, but for DIA.)  However, I worked in customer service arenas for 20 years and anywhere I worked if you treated people the way these United employees did, you did not even get a warning…you were handed your crayons and told to go home. 

I say to all the nice people I’ve met over the years working at the Denver airport in TSA, airport help desks, restaurants, shops, restrooms…you are awesome.  Sorry I won’t be seeing you again, I no longer fly United and will be drinking my layovers elsewhere.  And to United management who ignores letters of complaints, and your nasty airport employees (you know who you are), I wish you a lifetime filled with people who treat you exactly the way you treat them.

(It’s been 19 months since that trip and I’ve not flown United since. They don’t care…and neither do I.  See, I told you Don’t Care Air was the perfect slogan for them.) 

What if Cows Gave Root Beer Instead of Milk?

It’s recently rained 29 out of 31 days in our mountain valley. Spending that much time indoors has led my brain to spend a lot of time in philosophical thought. For instance, I contemplated, what if cows gave root beer instead of milk?

My shredded wheat would be really good with ice cream.

The FDA and ADA would endorse “Root Beer, it does a body good.”  There would be a new ad campaign for “Got Root Beer?”

Instead of milking a cow, you would be rooting one. 

Sooner or later some fundamentalist numb-nut would say it’s alcoholic since it is a type of beer, and Congress would pass a law you must be 21 to drink it.  Next kids will start having illegal Root Beer parties. They’ll buy cows with their allowances and hide them in their rooms.  Parents will be arrested for contributing to the carbonation of a minor.

Moms will form the group MARB (Mother’s Against Root Beer).  They’ll protest the effects of excessive belching and sugar highs.  Soon Root Beer will not be enough; they’ll go after Mountain Dew and the Mormon religion will collapse when the Feds criminalize The Dew.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will head PEC:  The President’s council against Evil Cows.  Kids will respond with their own group PUC: Peeps Utilizing Cows.  With all the uproar Congress will outlaw cows and export them all to China.  There will be no more root beer or beef in the U.S.  China will control the underground cow market.  The U.S. economy collapses, and we are all forced to learn Chinese.

It won’t be so bad… Americans will adapt because we love Chinese Take-Out.

My Entourage is the Crap in my Car

Living in wild, mountain country means having a car full of crap. I’m not referring to the wadded up McDonald’s bag with a half-eaten bag of fries in it lying on the floor. Or the dirty sock that fell out of your gym bag. Not even the homework that mysteriously was misplaced under the seat by your third-grader.

Serious mountain dwellers could live out of their vehicle for weeks (and often do). At last check my truck had in it:

Snowshoes

Sleeping Bag & pillow

Three pair of boots (hiking, snow and wellies)

Two coats, winter hat & gloves

Two gallons of water

Solar/wind-up lantern

Axe

Emergency food & matches

Fishing pole and necessary gear to go with it

Knife

Inflatable river inner tube

Tool kit, shovel, snow broom

Emergency bottle of whiskey (which means unopened)

Small cooler

Coffee mug

Teddy Bear (place bear and the knife on the passenger seat when traveling alone and people will think you’re crazy and leave you alone. This especially works for lone ladies if you drive in boxer shorts and grungy t-shirt and don’t brush your hair.)

Coffee mug

Yesterday I realized I had been driving around for a couple months without the key member of my Entourage. I was traumatized by my failure as a mountain woman. Without this I could be in immediate danger in an emergency situation. I had NO coffee. The mug was rattling around under the backseat, but nowhere in my truck could I find coffee. I was like a rapper without my peeps. A CEO without an assistant. A bull without a herd of cows.

I immediately went to the grocery store and remedied the disaster waiting to happen. Later George and I took my truck when we went out for dinner.

He looked in the backseat (why he does this I have no idea…he knows better). “What’s in all the sacks?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Well…now I do.”

“It won’t be good for your blood pressure.” I warn him.

“Let’s see.  Looks like 5, 10, 15 pounds of coffee. Filters. A 4-cup coffeemaker, a coffee-press, a Keurig coffeemaker and six boxes of K-cups.”

“It’s nothing really, honey.” I speed up, hoping to get to the restaurant before George asks any more questions.

“Did all our machines break at once? Was there a sale? At least tell me there’s a sane explanation.”

“It’s for my truck, in case of emergency.”

“I suppose the next time you travel alone the teddy bear will be holding the knife in one hand and making coffee in the Keurig with the other.”

“Wow, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Could you hurry up, I need a double-scotch.”

Tom Brady's Deflate-gate is nothing compared to Chicken-gate 2105

I couldn’t care less about deflated footballs and Tom Brady’s alleged need to gain an edge by cheating. The real issue of importance is the chicken incident that occurred at our house recently.

Our neighbor, Tim was going on vacation and asked us to take care of his chickens. George said he wanted no part of chickens, but would take care of the rest of the animals and house. This left me and our other neighbors, Molly and husband Dickey, to handle the daily chores of feeding and gathering eggs. I’d grown up helping my aunt with her egg business, (truthfully, I was mostly running away from the damn pecking chickens). I at least knew what was expected of us, and since there were only 15 chickens compared to her hundreds, the task seemed manageable.

Molly was taking care of egg gathering every day, until one afternoon she came over and was very concerned one of the hens refused to leave the nest with eggs for the last three days. Dear God, it was a broody hen, and Tim had warned us never let the eggs go for more than a day or they will start to turn them into little chickens instead of omelets.

George suddenly needed to conduct important business in his office, and took off like a jet on an aircraft carrier. That left Dickey and I to put on long sleeve shirts and gloves and head into battle.

“I hate chickens,” Dickey informed me.

“They’re like little terrorists, except with bigger peckers.” I said.

“Seriously, this is no joking matter.”

“If I don’t laugh, I might mess myself.”

“Okay, you agree not to mess yourself and I agree to watch you get that hen off the eggs.”

I don’t think this arrangement was headed in my favor. We cautiously opened the coop door and stepped inside, with me leading the way. There she was! A grumpy mother hen sitting on her eggs, with a rooster perched on the rafter above us standing guard. Without provocation he attacked. We turned and ran out the coop door with arms flapping.

“Fuck! He’s trying to kill me,” I yelled. “I think he got me, I’m going to die from Bird flu.”

“Thank God you were in front of me, or he might have gotten me and I have three small children.” Dickey said from his safe perch hiding behind the now slammed shut door.

I looked at the smiling face of pastor Dickey. Yep, Dickey was a pastor, minister, man of God, a bible-carrying sermonizer and I had dropped the F bomb loud enough to be heard at the pearly gates.

“I’m so sorry for my language.”

“Don’t worry about it. If I’d gone in first I would have been saying the F word also.”

We stood at the chicken wire windows looking in plotting our next move, when George appeared.

“What was all that girlish screaming about?” He asked.

“I wasn’t screaming.”

Dickey looked up, “Yeh, that might have been me.”

George rolled his eyes, stuck his hand out demanding my gloves. “Okay, Miss I-Know-Chickens, how do I get the hen off the nest?”

“Slide your hand under the hen, grab her by the feet and carefully toss her off the nest.”

“I’d be more worried about that rooster.” Dickey said not looking up from his window.

“No one said anything about a rooster.” George looked at me.

“Well, he might be a little pissed off at us for trying to get at the hen.”

With that warning, George opened the coop door and entered like a Ninja ready for action. Dickey and I held our positions at separate windows outside the war zone. It was all over in a matter of seconds. The rooster attacked, and with deft hands George grabbed him, feathers flying, and tossed him out the opposite door into the chicken yard. He quickly grabbed the hen by the feet and pitched her out while closing the door with his foot.

“Wow, that was amazing,” Dickey said, “He is like a chicken-whisperer.”

“That was more like chicken chunking.”  Looking through my window of chicken wire I was kinda turned on by my chicken tossing warrior husband.

“Hey, you two chickens get in here and get the eggs.”

“Don’t think there’s room for all of us, so I’ll wait here.” Dickey said.

I reached into the nest and picked up the eggs. “Ick. Ick. Ick. They’re hot.”

“You’d be hot too if someone sat on you for the last three days.”

“Now what do we do with them?” I asked.

“Let’s crack them open and let the cat eat them.” George said.

“No way. We’ve got to get rid of the evidence.” Pastor Dickey chimed in. “Tim can never know about any of this.”

“He’s right. The cat could puke up a chicken embryo and we’d be clucked.” 

Trash pick-up was in two days, and the bagged and discarded eggs would be long gone before Tim’s return.  With a gleam in his eye and a giggle on his lips Dickey turned to go home. “Remember, we will never speak of this incident again.” Nothing I like more than having a minister as my partner in crime.

A few days later Molly showed up at our house again. “I went to gather eggs and in the chicken yard was a hen with blood all over her head and the other chickens pecking at her. Do you know what we should do?”

“Drink?” I replied.

Molly was worried we failed again. “I saw some medicine in the house marked for cannibalism use on chickens.”

“I knew it. Those damn chickens ARE trying to eat me. It’s payback for all the chicken fingers I’ve eaten over the years. I’m never going near them again.”

“Calm down, Chicken Little,” George said. “The sky isn’t falling, and while they may eat each other, I don’t think they’re interested in your chicken legs.”

“This is no time to discuss my spindly legs. We need to take action before we have a massacre on our hands. First they kill one of their own, get a taste of that yummy chicken breast and before morning it will be full on chicken Armageddon.”

“I don’t think I can catch a chicken and apply the medicine.” Molly stated far more calmly than I preferred. What we needed was more hysterics…I needed moral craziness support.

George was in thinking mode… I could see in his eyes he was driving the intellectual train, while I stayed on the tilt-a-whirl.

“Here’s what we’ll do.” George stated. “Tim will be home in less than 24 hours. I know he's dealt with this issue before; so we leave them alone and let him handle it.”

“What if the chicken dies before he gets home?” I asked.

“We have no idea what we’re doing. I think it’s better left for Tim.”

Molly nodded agreement and then added, “If the chicken dies, let’s make a deal to blame Dickey.”

She was asking us to enter into a pack against a man of God.  Tom Brady facing the Commissioner of Football and receiving a four game suspension punishment was nothing compared to facing God and his punishment for wrongs against one of his chosen. Brady’s punishment will probably be overturned. Would God be so forgiving to us in Chicken-gate?

I looked at George and knew we were thinking the same thing. “Deal.” 

Promise #257…I will stop screwing with the idiots at the power companies.

A couple months after we moved into our house a representative from the electric company called concerned because the electric bill had decreased from $600 a month to $150.  WTH!

I told her, “I have monkey-like feet so I climbed the power pole, hooked a new line into the transformer, slid down the line like Spiderman, and then disconnected the meter box.”

“That action is illegal,” She said reading from what sounded like a bad B-movie script.

 Is she on medication?  “Well gee ma’am we hook the meter up one week a month so you get some money.”

Silence ensued while she tried to find the answer in her script to my response.  “You can’t do that.”

Oh for heavens sake, that’s the best response she could come up with.  “Look lady you interrupted my busy day (I was watching The Price is Right) to either: 1) demand I use more electricity or 2) accuse me of stealing it.”

“Ma’am your usage is not normal and we need to know why.”  What the banana fart! Do we now have electricity Nazi’s requiring us to remain addicted to their expensive power grid?

“No, what’s not normal is the six snowboarders who lived here before us and ran a broken down electric furnace 24/7 with half the burners not working and also had enough grow lights to illuminate New York.”

“It is nice to have lots of plants.” OMG, she really is dumb. I’m starting to feel sorry for her, which is never a good sign.

“I could hook you up with those dudes and you could buy lots of beautiful plants from them.  I hear you can even cut the plant and throw it in your fireplace this winter and it will make your house smell festive for company. If you like to bake, you can put their plants in your brownies too.” I know I should feel bad about my behavior and try to be a better person…ah hell, who am I kidding?  “You could even plant your own and then sell them.”

“That would be lovely.  Maybe some day I’ll have the extra time.”

Damn, my conscience (I hate that little guy).  “Look, the reason our bill is so much lower is we do not use the broken electric furnace at all, we heat with a wood stove.  And there is only two of us, not the six dudes and their girlfriends living here.”

“That makes sense. And I will consider getting more plants for our house.” She said. “Have a nice day.”

“You too, and don’t forget the grow lights.”  OMG I am going to hell.