I heart my company

Or not...

I really hope that yesterday, day 1 or 4, wasn't any representation of what the rest of this trip will be like. I showed up at work yesterday all ready to go work and have a good time. But when I signed it I saw that our flight was already delayed an hour. Never a good way to start the day. Our flight was delayed because the plane we were supposed to take was late coming in. No idea why. The weather in ATL was perfect... but whatever. When that plane finally got there we went out to it, only to find out that it has maintenance and we can't take it. Our captain gets them to swap us to a different plane, which of course, isn't in Atlanta yet. We go to one gate and wait and wait for the plane. Only to be sent to another one all the way at the end of the terminal. (We're walking around outside as well).

We finally take off around 740 (flight was supposed to leave at 515) and still have to go to Detroit and back and to Montgomery... I knew then it was going to be a long night. I did the math and figured out that we'd get back from DTW around 1130, which was 30 min after we were supposed to leave for MGM. A smart company would have planned ahead and put another crew on that flight. I guess a smart company would've found a different airplane for us in the first place instead of making us wait 2 hours for one that they already knew was late.

Anyhoo... We get back to Atlanta and park at D35, only to be told that that plane was staying there for the night and we had to go over to C35 to get the plane we were supposed to take to MGM. It's almost midnight by now. For those of you who don't know, these two gates are both at the far end of each concourse. They are the farthest two gates away from each other on the ASA concourses. So frustrating... We were the second to last Delta flight to leave last night. So we finally get to the gate and everyone is clapping for us cause evidently they've been waiting forever. It was nice and I was thinking, maybe this won't be so bad after all.

We finally get everyone on the plane, which has a broken lav. Some people were griping "I'm not a happy camper" "Took you long enough to get here" etc... but most people were ok. I'm waiting and waiting for them to come tell me that that is all the passengers. Everyone is sitting looking at me, wondering what's going on. I have no idea. Finally the gate agent comes out and says there is a couple who really needs to make the flight. The husband is handicapped. Unfortunately we only have one empty seat. So they finally persuade someone to give up their seat. People offer to switch around to let them sit together. It's all good. And then we wait. And wait. And wait. We finally see them coming up in a wheelchair and find out that we also need a lift. The man can't walk up the steps. So we wait for that. Then we get the man on the lift and bring him up on the plane and they don't know how to get him to his seat. He doesn't have use of either of his legs. Evidently the people whose job it is to work with handicap people, getting them on and off planes, are all gone for the night so we have rampers working on this. Finally someone moves so he can be in the front seat and everyone picks him up and somehow maneuvers him into his seat. We've all be on the plane for over an hour by now.

I have a man call me to his seat to ask if that's the only lav we have on the plane. I say yes. He says, well I'm a diabetic and when I have to go, I have to go. At this point I'm too tired, irritated, frustrated, to even care. So I just look at him, I think. He says, well I guess I'll just pee in my seat. I said ok. You have got to be kidding me. My dad has been diabetic his whole life and last time I checked he's never had this problem. I'm just thinking, noone is making you take this flight.... aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. Seriously, what does he expect me to do? Pull out my tools and fix the lav? Personally find a different plane for him??? People are so ridiculous. This whole time we had a jetblue jumpseater standing up in the front with me. It helped some cause he would entertain me when I thought I was going to shoot myself in the head.

We finally take off at 106am. I just turned off all the lights and let everyone sleep. It took a whopping 29 minutes to get to Montgomery. We pull up at the gate and of course everyone is anxious to get off. We're happy cause they have a jetway so we don't have to deal with a lift. I stand there at the door waiting for them to bring the jetway up. They dont' seem to know how to drive it. Then they tell me that we have to pull the plane up further cause they jetway wont' reach. I tell the captain who says no just as they're slamming the door in my face. We have to make everyone sit back down, restart the engines, and move the plane about 5 feet forward... Right now, all I want to do is hide in the corner and go to sleep. We FINALLY get everyone off the plane, except for the handicap man. Unfortunately all of their people who are supposed to help with handicap people have also gone home and there are two women to deal with it. Between the jumpseater, these two women, and some really nice passenger who came back to help, we finally get him off the plane. I then proceed to kill myself... oh wait, nevermind. Then we go get in the taxi, ride 20 minutes to the hotel in podunk nowhere Alabama, and sleep until I can't sleep anymore.

Thankfully I have a great captain and saw a lot of my friends from work when I was waiting around. That made it all a little less painful. I had one passenger come back after he deplaned in Atlanta and ask if we could be friends, and another ask if I had a card so we could go for coffee... Not so much. But it feels good to be asked anyway. Makes a really, really miserable night a little more bearable. Now I'm going to be late for work if I don't hurry. I know this is really long but last night pretty much took the cake for miserable days of work and I felt it should be documented.