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December 20, 2005

Northwest Airlines Blows

Oh, the story I have for you . . .

My lovely wife Lisa and I flew out to California for personal and business reasons. Yesterday, on our flight back, we were almost sabotaged by this bitter African-American woman who was manning the A2 gate at Memphis -- Lisa sometimes gets this treatment from other women because of the way she looks, especially from certain African-American women. Anyway, this woman deliberately gave us misleading information, as I would soon figure out.

This lady had already rubbed me the wrong way ninety minutes earlier when I asked for help changing our seat assignments, "I have to help the passengers for this plane, sir." There was no one in line except the guy that she had just finished helping. She just didn't want to be bothered with us. Lazy.

15 minutes before our flight, word came over the intercom that passengers would be limited to only one carry-on each. I went back to the lady who didn't like us to explain that all my bags met Northwest's requirements for carry-ons. I didn't understand that this was a smaller plane. In my defense, you couldn't see any planes from this enclosed waiting area. She got huffy with me (horrible customer service) and told me that I would have to check my largest rolling bag back at Security near Gate A19.

This was so "last minute" and seemingly out of our control -- very fear inducing. Lisa and I got about 50 paces away from A2, hoping to check our bags and still catch our flight, when some nice lady stopped us. The lady explained that she was a person who helped physically disabled people make it to their plane on time and that she knew the airport's procedures well. She explained that if we were to go all the way to A19 and try to check our bags that we would miss our flight. She said that all we had to do was to go back to the lady at Gate A2 and get a green tag for each item that was too large to fit into the plane's overhead bin or under our seats. Our bags would then be stowed in the luggage compartment but would be waiting for us in the hallway as we left the plane.

Everything clicked in my head. I was livid. I hurried back and firmly asked the lady point blank, "Are you the person who hands out green tags that people can put on their luggage so that they don't have to check them back by Gate A19?" Her response was to roll her eyes at me and hand a wad of green tags (which she was now holding in her hand) to the guy standing next to her. She disappeared behind the door to the A2 hallway. I was so angry, realizing that this bitter, competitive woman was trying to screw us royally.

The guy handed me two green tags. I thanked him and expressed my exasperation at the woman, about which he smiled apologetically and shrugged. Wimp.

The woman reappeared, at which point Lisa and I began to relay our extreme disappointment with her customer service skills. She denied ever telling us to go back near Gate A19 to check our bags, at which point my blood boiled and, without feeling to need to censor myself anymore (and having had some liquid courage with lunch), I called her a liar to her face. At that, she took a mild fighting posture, wagged her head with wide eyes, and the guy put himself between her and me. I went away to tag my bag while Lisa attempted some damage control. However, Lisa defended me, gently explaining that "he called you a liar because you lied to us." (Lisa's actual words)

Anyway, the woman kept denying any wrongdoing, telling the guy standing there that Lisa was confused. We're going to take this to the president of Northwest Airlines if we have to. We have everything we need: the lady's first name, Gloria; the location, Gate A2; the date, December 19th, 2005; the time, 2:30 p.m. CST; the airline, Northwest; and the airport, Memphis International. When Lisa asked her name, she replied with a sneer, "It's Gloria, G-L-O-R-I-A." as if she felt invincible. Bitch.

A few minutes later, as she was scanning our boarding passes without making eye contact with us, she was muttering under her breath. As we collected our things to go through the A2 door, you could hear her telling people behind us "that woman called me a liar" as if to incite a passenger uprising against us. If Lisa talked about troublesome library patrons to other patrons, she would be fired on the spot. Besides, I was the one who called her a liar, not Lisa. I actually feel proud of myself for that.

The most hilarious part of the whole green-tagged bag situation was that our bags were just sitting in the hall next to the airplane door waiting for us. No one was verifying that people took their own bags, matching green stub to tag, so the whole green ticket thing was bullshit. Anyone could have taken our bags. Northwest Airlines sucks, especially at Memphis.

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 08:04 PM | Comments (5)

December 08, 2005

SNL's Taco Town

Even when it experiences a slump, Saturday Night Live is still the best. Here are Andy Samberg, Jason Sudeikis and Bill Hader in a brilliant swipe at Taco Bell called Taco Town.

I had posted this fake commercial a couple of months ago, but there was a problem in the SNL switching room. Fortunately, Lorne Michaels aired the segment again this past weekend sans glitches.

4.6.2006 Addition: Please support the new show Sons and Daughters by visiting my Sons and Daughters video pages, watch the content, review the players and provide appropriate feedback to ABC. I would love to see this show continue.

Below are links to three digital formats for this video: Windows Media 9, Quicktime 7 (h.264) and a form which is playable on the Apple Video iPods.

Windows Media 9 Format
SNL_Taco_Town.wmv

Apple Video iPod Format
SNL_Taco_Town.m4v (right-click and save the linked file to your hard disk)

Quicktime 7 Format

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 10:46 AM | Comments (5)