So there we were at John F. Kennedy International Airport waiting for our flight back to Manchester. It was ordeal enough to find a cab driver who would actually return us to JFK at 4:30 in the afternoon (something about rush hour and lucrative short trips around Manhattan versus mandatory flat fees to the airport blah, blah, blah), and adding insult to injury, we then had to wait right next to the gate that was boarding for PDX, a flight that patently did not include ourselves.
Our flight was instead delayed by 1.5 hours, during which time we were given approximately no information. Of any kind, really, until it was time to board and they apologized for unforeseen “maintenance issues.” At one point, a disgruntled British person approached the airline guy working the gate counter and regaled him with a delightful story about having been in the airport for the last 9.5 hours and something about “no communication” and “it’s just about customer service.”
And by “regaled,” I of course mean “bored to tears.” Every now and then, the airline guy would disinterestedly look up from his computer and say something like “I don’t have any more information than you do,” or “I can only tell you what they tell me,” and eventually the British person gave up and wandered himself off.
Then Stephan motioned me over to where he was standing, with a clear view of the aforementioned counter computer. “You know,” he said, “that guy has been googling frogs this whole time.”
