The Garden of the Blind

I am travelling this week. It's been very interesting and sometimes even exciting. At least it is now that I've found my way out of the Pacific Northwest. While I was flying from Seattle to Los Angeles, I wrote down an account of my experience trying to get away from the SeaTac airport.

In all fairness, it's not that bad a place. But the places I went weren't that great either. Before my saga, I offer a few observations of the area:

Apparently, it’s against the law to have a freeway around there that is not stopped up with a traffic jam. On a Friday afternoon at 6:00 I would expect it, but not on a Saturday evening. Apparently someone thoroughly flipped their car, which had traffic at a standstill in both directions. It seems that not only Utahns can rubberneck.

All three nights we were there, we had dinner in the same area right on the shore of the Peuget Sound on the north side of Tacoma. I was disappointed with the menu selections (too heavy on the seafood and alcohol) all three nights, but I did eventually get a decent meal of chicken fettuccini (no alfredo) the third night. I also got a free dessert because the waitress spilled on me. All three nights, we had to wait for a long time to get any service. We would wait for them to take our order, then we waited for our food, and then we waited for our check. The third night, I timed it and found that from when we asked for our check to when we got up and left, it was 30 minutes. That’s ridiculous.

I did eventually get to downtown Seattle. We finished work early on Saturday,and so we headed up to the city, which I had never been to before. I was singularly unimpressed. I guess I’m not a big city kind of guy. I can handle myself there, but I’m just not happy thronging with the hoards of humanity and I’m not impressed with all those silly little shops that sell some little specialty item. I did buy one item, which I’m very pleased with, so far at least. It did end up getting spilled on later that evening, but it wasn’t a problem.

At one point, as we were going up some stairs to a restaurant, I saw a blur and heard a loud clattering. It turned out that a diner who was sitting by the top of the stairs lost his butter knife, which almost hit me on its way down. I was so shook up that I just left the knife there. Later (much later, since we had to wait for our check), on our way out, I saw that the same knife was still there. At least it wasn’t going to hit anyone while it was there.

Through this all, I felt a gnawing uneasiness with the place. It was just a troubled area that couldn't produce a decent alfredo sauce. The problem is that I almost didn't get away. This story is long and troubled. The following is my observations written while I was on the plane, flying away from Washington (except for a last bit at the end that was obviously written after I had arrived in Los Angeles).

My Sunday morning was all about standing in line. We got up early to catch our flights, and I believed that my flight was leaving at 9:15. I was in an e-ticket check in line that wasn’t moving because they had the kiosks at the front of the line where passenger would interact with the kiosk and then check their baggage. The next passenger would then start the kiosk process. Have these people ever heard of pipelining?

I digress. It turned out that the kiosk had little bearing on my day. I checked my ticket only to find that my flight left at 7:15. It was 6:55 when I realized this, and the flight was already closed. So, I went over to the full service check-in (I assume that the name is meant to mimic options for using gas pumps, because the word “service” doesn’t seem to have been high on anybody’s minds that day). There, I found a strange line that wrapped around a roped off path, and then wandered off across an aisle at the end of the path. I looked around and discovered that they had it snaking its way around on the other side of the aisle first. So, I found my way to the end of the line and waited. It took quite a few minutes for the line to start moving, but once I got across the aisle, it took only a couple more minutes to get to the front of the line. There, a very nice and friendly lady got me a standby ticket on a later flight (to her, I apologize for the earlier service comments—she was actually quite helpful and friendly). I was given a boarding pass for the second leg of my flight (which I would arrive in L.A. in time to catch, but that’s a story for later), and a card for my new flight that would help direct me to the right gate.

At this point, I got into a security checkpoint line, which was the fastest moving line I saw all day. We practically flew up to the first checkpoint where they check everybody’s boarding passes. I was instructed to go into a different line from there. I found myself behind a nice oriental family, and in front of a woman in white. From the latter, I discovered that this special line was the thorough invasive search line. We had been tagged by our airline (it was the same one in both cases) for this extra scrutiny. In my case, it was because I had changed flights at the last minute, and because I was only going one way. The catch here was that, like both of the check-in lines, this line wasn’t moving. At all. I saw people passing through the metal detector, but that didn’t seem to affect the line back where I was. I saw the security line at several of the other 8 metal detectors go completely empty, but we were there motionless. Well, it only took about 40 minutes, but I did eventually get through that line. I only had to take off my shoes, belt, and everything that wasn’t cloth. I carry a lot in my pockets, so this was no mean feat.

The best news all day was that I didn’t have to wait for the train to the gates. It had just pulled up when I got to it, and so I was ferried across under the tarmac to the isolated building where a plane was apparently waiting for us. There, I got in line to see what I needed to do about my standby statud. I was the fourth person in the line, if you count the guy already at the counter. I waited patiently while he took a very long time to resolve his issues. This finally happened when he went with the clerk from the counter over to another counter some distance away. At this point, there was ten or so people in line, including the lady in white. We watched as the clerk picked up what appeared to be a coffee, and then walked away down the hall.

We were in shock. What was she doing? We were all there in line before she left, so she couldn’t be so oblivious as to not realize that we were there or that we would want some sort of service from her. We waited. After about 10 minutes, we got frustrated, and I appointed myself as the investigator. I went in search of her, or anyone else who could alleviate our plight. I went to the customer service desk nearby, where I informed them that we were waiting in line without anyone to help us. The woman at that desk brusquely informed me that I should go back and wait. Apparently the concept of service hadn’t been able to get past the security checkpoint, perhaps due to a last minute change of flight plans. I am not sure what I could call that woman, but I’m confident that if she had children, they would be puppies.

I also tried asking a nearby janitor for help (none there) and I tried some phones that were apparently there to help people make reservations (although I don’t know why you need reservations when you’re already in the airport with a valid ticket). I never did find out why those phones were, as they apparently were not connected to anything. Perhaps people find the presence of information phones comforting, even if the phones are incapable of providing any information at all.

Eventually (meaning after 20 minutes), someone came to the desk and immediately informed us in nearly-intelligible English that if we had a blue card (as most of us did), then we didn’t need to see her. Why she couldn’t have said that 20 minutes earlier is beyond me. But then, why she would disappear for so long is also beyond me.

The problem at this point was that I still only had a standby ticket. It seems that many of my fellow passengers who had made reservations even months before had not been given seat assignments, so I had to wait for all of them to get a seat assignment. Then, it seems that fortune smiled on me after all, because I was given a seat and allowed on the plane.

Now, I don’t want to point blame, but I had to wait in four terrible lines that morning. The first two were check-in lines for this airline, and the fourth was a line at the gate for the same airline. I’d chalk up my encounter with the invasi-audit security line to coincidence, but it seems that everybody else on my flight (at least that I’ve seen) was sent through that line too. It was probably unavoidable for me, but why send dozens of other people who had reservations months before through that too, overwhelming the limited staff there and causing excess delays for their travelers.

To further indicate just how systemic this problem is, while walking between my gates at LAX, I passed two unmanned customer service counters for this airline, one of which had people lined up at it. (I was going to take a picture of the second one, but almost as soon as I saw it, someone came to man the desk.

So, United Airlines, I hereby proclaim that your service sucks. Get it together. I suggest that you track down that girl who gave me my boarding passes at check-in and see what she does, because she had it together (she actually took care of both me and the guy immediately in front of me in line, that’s how good she was). For the rest of the company, they can improve your check-in process, their security screening selection criteria, and their overall communications with the customer. Maybe they can keep some of those customers. I, for one, do not intend to fly United again if I can help it.

To drive home their level of service, after arriving at LAX, the very first customer service desk that I passed had a line of people at it, and it was also unmanned.