calm like a bomb
i thought she was kidding. seriously. the ticketing area was completely deserted, so at first i didn’t know if she was kidding, or if i should just kiss my a$$ goodbye because there was apparent imminent danger. we dropped off the rental car and arrived at the check-in counter at LAX at 5:40. the departure time was 6:35. the stone-faced woman at the ticket counter asked, ”can i help you?” so we said we were there to check in for our flight to houston (and patting ourselves on the back, by the way, for arriving after an hour of being lost in los angeles and finding no line to stand in). she said, “oh…… no. you can’t board that flight.”
i was in shock. literally. i mean, i looked around the airport, on the beautifully sunny afternoon, and it looked like this:
LAX @ 5:45
so i said, “what???? why?????” and she calmly explained that boarding begins one hour prior to departure and that we were too late. i said, but it’s barely 5:40, the departure is scheduled for 6:35, there’s plenty of time! she informed me that no, it was 5:42, and unless we were here before 5:35, we absolutely could not board our flight.
not that it was full, not that we had invalid tickets, just that we couldn’t board the flight if we hadn’t been there one hour prior to departure.
now, i digress. before we left, i read a great deal of continental.com to ensure that i would be all up to speed on air-travel, because it’s been awhile, quite frankly. and i do remember this tidbit: “Note: The baggage acceptance cut off time at the Ticket Counter is 45 minutes before the scheduled departure of each flight.” but as previously stated, we arrived at the ticket counter roughly 55 minutes prior to departure. and we had a ticket. and we were early!!!! but alas, it was no go. so we asked, fine, when’s the next flight? 12:35 am was the response. midnight!!!!! fine, fine, we’ll take it. and, like an snl parody of herself, she attacks the keyboard at 120,000 wpm for a few minutes then, sadly shaking her head, says, hmmmm, no.
no? no! because the freakin’ flight is full!!!! apparently an ungodly amount of people take the midnight flight from lax to houston on a regular basis!!!! that, or they all missed that supposed hour deadline.
and the next flight??? 6:30 am.
so there we were, no car, no hotel. i was due back at work the next morning. he had clients to attend to. and we had to find a place to go, using the germ-encrusted public telephones for said purpose (because the wi-fi was only available in the gate areas, which, of course, we weren’t allowed to get to as we weren’t allowed to fly) to stay for roughly eight hours before we would return to the airport because i’d be damned before they’d bump me off my replacement flight. at least… at least… at least we ended up getting our room for free. because when the boyfriend is dealing with the biotch being *this* close to imploding and he makes a reservation with a kid at the front desk that apparently doesn’t know what the #*$& he’s doing and he #*$&’s it up, he lets loose on the kid and says the only way to fix it is to let us keep the room and refund back the amount we paid for it.
’nuff said.
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