Tag: incompetent

I HATE CDG

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I try really hard to keep things on DRIVENOUTSIDE positive, but I must now take a moment to ascend my soapbox and bitch:

I spend 1/3 to 1/2 of my work life on the road. I have been to airports all over the world: third world countries, Eastern Europe, Central America, tiny American towns, western China, etc… and the one I hate to fly through the most is CDG in Paris. Seriously.  I have been stuck in Terminal 2E for 6 hours today with a grumpy, jet-lagged wife and had to deal with super un-helpful staff.  Not feeling the love right now.

I have never met a single soul that likes to fly through that particular Hell airport, even my colleagues from France would rather connect through Amsterdam, Madrid, or Brussels. Really, it has been the topic of at least 3 discussions since I have lived in France and two of them were not anger induced or alcohol fueled.

Why? Well, glad you asked…  Here is my $0.02 worth:  Lack of forethought in the layout of the international arrival area, making it hard for through travelers to negotiate from gate to gate, poor signage and limited announcements (even in French) concerning last minute gate changes. Lots of last minute gate changes! Chronically understaffed security and customs checkpoints. Why should they have more than one border gaurd asigned first thing on a MOnday morning?  So what if a Trans-Atlantic flights come in at the same time. Getting on a plane is a mob experience where no form of order is either expected or imposed. You need a spell book to find the public restroom in some terminals, and last but not least, every single time I have gone through CDG in the last 12 years, something in my checked luggage has either gone missing, gets lost, or is damaged! Seriously, that is not an exaggeration.

You need examples? OK: in 2004 I had a bag left out on the Tarmac, in the rain. It was completely soaked all the way through and dripping when it met me at baggage claim. In 2008, 2 bags of Cheetos were taken from my wife’s suitcase, in 2010 my bag was opened for inspection and mixed with someone else’s. Never got one shoe back. My bags were lost in January of 2014 and I didn’t see them for 3 days.  You can bike from Paris to Toulouse in three days…  I lost 3 dress shirts 6 months later while in transit to Hamburg. In 2013 I had a suitcase that came out on the baggage belt with shrink wrap barely holding it in one pile. It looked like it had been sucked into the engine of a plane. I was informed that Air France “Is not liable for normal wear and tear…” and my bags condition was normal for CDG. Really.

Ok, done venting. Dismounting my soapbox now…

A giant sealed dome over our place would solve most of this….

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

There are some days where I want to just drop everything I am holding, turn off the lights, lock the door, and go on an extended vacation involving a sugar-sand beach and copious amounts of fruit laden alcohol.  This Saturday was one of those days.

I decided to work on the kitchen cabinet doors, cut some plywood sheets down, and tackle a bench top while the sun was shining.  I opened the shop, brought out a plastic truck-bed toolbox to cut on (my 4 sawhorses are currently being used elsewhere), pulled 3 full-sized sheets of ¾” and ½” plywood out of the lumber rack and drug it all out into the backyard.  After marking the first sheet, adjusting my saw blade depth, lining up my rip fence, and checking for clearance – I started my first cut and immediately ripped a 6” long kerf-cut into the top of the tool box that the sheet was sitting on.  Dammit! I cut the rest of the plywood up without incident, but grumbled thinking about the mistake (I will fill and patch it with molten P-Tex plastic at some later point).  After stacking all the assorted pieces of ply back into my cluttered shop, I man-handled the 170+ pound beech and maple in-work bench top from the basement and placed it on the now-damaged toolbox – trying very hard not to either herniate a disk in my bask or tear what is left of my shoulder.

My Shop/Garage is pilled deep and high with lumber, hardware, undone winter projects, wood shavings, tools, sawdust,  flotsam & jetsam, etc….  I spent an hour trying to set up my router and in all the clutter and mess I couldn’t find a ¼” collet for one router and the other does not have an integrated fence, so using my big monkey brain, I improvised a fence.  All I really wanted to do with the top was to route channels for t-track and thoroughly sand it down before taking the beast back into the bowels of the basement to apply stain and a tung oil finish.  All was going as planned and my first cut was perfect.  The second cut went just the same, but at the very end of the third cut my improvised fence failed and the router wobbled – gouging the top that I had spent a month building.  Jesus H. Christ I was pissed! – Mostly at myself, but there was some vitriol left over for the machine in my hands.  I said dirty, hateful, vile things while resetting the fence and making an adjusted cut.  I moved on to make my last cut in the very front lip of the bench and while the fence held, I stood up mid-way through the pass and the router wobbled, making the bit chew into a section of wood where I did not want it to go.  I gritted through the rest of the pass and finished the cut, but the second I was clear of the wood, I wanted to throw the still running router on the ground and beat the electric life out of it with the pruning shears that were leaning against the garage wall.  I had to walk away, hand over my mouth, and just breathed deeply with my back to the offending router, my own incompetence, and the damage they had both wrought.  My moment of reflection was short lived because just as I turned, I felt the first drop of rain fall from what was minutes ago a blue sky that had ominously darkened while I was focused on my router-rage (I swear it happened just like that – strait out of a hip urban dramedy…).  SHIT!!  I ran for something to cover the bench top.  The only thing I could find was a pink tent fly and a sheet of cardboard.  I covered everything and retreated into the shop, right eye twitching with disbelief/confusion/anger.  I spent the next hour drinking coffee laced with sawdust and moving piles of crap around in my shop.

When my sweet wife got home she MAY have found me in the shop muttering to myself, pacing, covered in saw dust, contemplating the logistics of building a giant sealed dome over our entire lot.  She talked me off the ledge, helped me put the top back into the basement, patted me a little, told me I was pretty and smart and a good boy, put me in some fresh, sawdust free clothes, and took me out to see a movie.

I got up the next morning and after a yummy breakfast of flaky croissants, bacon, eggs and two cups of coffee, I went downstairs and chiseled out the offending screw-ups, then cut and glued maple patches in.   After calming down some and after a good night’s sleep, I felt better about the whole thing, but me and that router are still not on speaking terms.

Left Out in the Rain

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Stamps-With-Foot and I worked furiously in the warm sunshine on Sunday in our yard and on the final bits of the kitchen cabinets that needed to be done. Our last tasks for the day were building cabinet drawers and priming the two base cabinets. I had my ubiquitous notebook out, to the side of where we were working, checking off tasks and referring to measurements & notes as we went. We cleaned up the tools and paint around 6:30, changed, had dinner at a local Thai place and ventured out to our new Trader Joe’s for a little grocery shopping.

I was getting ready this morning for a trip to Boeing and started looking for my notebook because I needed a phone number in it. It then hit me like a baseball bat… My notebook… got left outside… overnight!… in the Rain!! FVCK!!!! I popped out the back door like my butt was on fire, my bathrobe flapping and losing a flip-flop in the dash. Damn… It was sitting on the side of the wheel barrow and had swollen to an inch thick. I walked back to the house, with my head hung down and blotted off what water I could and checked the pages – a light of hope. I use a waterproof, indelible ink in my fountain pens, so there was only a little loss of information or smeared blotches (in spots where I used a cheap pen) where detailed notes and drawings used to be. I could have been SO MUCH worse.

While most folks would have to live with a swollen book, most folks don’t have an awesome steel and iron 1920’s book press sitting in their home office… I blotted the pages again as best I could, separated the wettest ones with wax paper sheets, and put it in the press with cardboard and a towel plotter to get out as much water as possible. I left it there for 8 hours or so and removed it before the pages started to stick together. I then carefully opened every page, sat it on its end with the covers far apart, pages fanned open, on the kitchen tile floor in front of the heater vent. Everything should be just fine… I say that with hope in my heart and my fingers crossed.

I will let it dry for a day or two and then press it again for another 24 hours or so. I might take the opportunity to press a design or my name into the cover – I update when it come out of the press.

UPDATE 4-22-12: Took the notebook out of the press and it is nice and flat. While waiting for it finish pressing I made an embossing stamp out of a scrap piece of popular. My carving chisels were taken in a recent theft, so I used a dremel tool with the diamond carver bit to scratch a simple test piece. It is a stylized version of the Arabic word IQRA. I have more or less adopted it as my own hallmark and use it to stamp my furniture, cabinets, it is on my stationary, and I have a smaller version that I use as a wax seal here and there. I decided it was fine time to mark my notebooks as well.

Aftermath of a robbery

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

A couple of months ago, we were robbed – my shop was cleaned of tools. It is just now that I have calmed down enough to write about it and not rant and want to get up and throw things/commit serious bodily harm to someone. All of my hand tools, small power tools and a rolling large tool box were taken. It was a huge blow, not just in dollars, but in sentiment as well. There were carving chisels that were my grandfathers, most of my father’s wrenches , 80 year old spoke shaves, saws, a brand new – never used – router, and all my air nailers. Cleaned out.

We were in the UK and Ireland for 9 days and a couple days after we got back, I had a miserable day at my J-O-B and just wanted to work in the garage/shop and make a big pile of plane shavings – stress relief. I walked in the door and there was stuff everywhere (more than usual). Boxes off shelves, lumber moved, clamps scattered… I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing – did my wife move my stuff… No… Wait… Fvck!! I got crazy mad, then wanted to cry. My stomach tied itself in knots and my heart was sick as I made a mental calculation of what all was in my tool boxes. I called the cops.

Police came, took a report, I called in insurance company, and started looking on Craig’s list and in local pawn shops, while taking slow and painful inventory of what was gone. Not one tool, chisel, saw, router, or wrench ever showed up. To add insult to injury, I know who took it all. We had some contractors do some work at the house around Christmas and one of them was a little sketchy. Not weird junky-itch sketchy, he just looked around at everything in the house and yard with an appraising eye and followed me into the shop to get some supplies I had for him to use and he lingered just a little too long. I didn’t really put it all together until weeks later. I won’t go into details because I cannot “prove” anything and an online accusation could lead to court or this guy showing up at my house again and that would lead a different sort of court case… But I KNOW this guy has my stuff. I know, not a hunch, not a feeling, I know. I called the police to tell them what I had found and I was told that unless he was seen on a public street with one of my tools in his hand, that they could do very little. No warrant to search his vehicle, or house, or shop would be forthcoming… Man, it pisses me off that I paid this guy for slow work that I had to finish AND he took my property – tangible links with my father and Grandfather.

I filed a complaint for the workmanship issues and uncompleted work with the BBB, gave him a craptastic review on Yelp, and let the guy who recommended him know what all exactly happened. Maybe I can save someone else’s stuff. Additionally, I cut the plug off of a power planer months before the break-in because it had an electrical short to the metal housing. I hope that he puts a plug on it and the thing shocks the living shit out of him or that one of the carving chisels slips and relieves him of a reproductive organ in the lower abdominal region…

opps…

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I apparently am a blog-tard…  I recently accidently turned off all comments for like a month and had no clue and a couple of days ago I mistakenly published a draft that had incomplete sentences, more misspelled words than usual, no pictures, and a run-on cycling related rant that I digressed into.  I am officially grounding myself from posting for a week.

Stupid freshman mistake

/ Matt Talley

I feels extra-smart… Like i gots me some real serious book-learnin’, whew-ee!

My wife, Stamps-with-Foot, went online last night and tried to comment on my Kindle lust post.  She gave me a wry look and said that the comments weren’t working.  I glared at her with the same suspicion your IT guy at work gives you when something is supposedly “wrong” with your computer.  I issued the “move over” command – I have been studying how IT works and nerd-bravado is something like 72.61% of their technical skill set –  and took her laptop.  Sure enough, the comments were off.  Huh?  I turned them back on and in just a minute the very same thing happened with the next post that she wanted to make some witty quip about.  I then spent close to an hour, hunched over her netbook, figuring out what was up…

It would seem that when I updated the appearance on my blog template a month or so ago, I somehow turned off all the comments on all my posts.  I have had swarms of e-mail lately and zero comments, so I wondered what was going on; now I know – I clicked the wrong check box and that was that. I feel extra-smart.

New Clutch for the Scooby

/ Matt Talley

Last week I had to have my clutch replaced on the Subaru at 24K.  I took it in to a yet-to–be-named dealership after it started slipping on the way home from work and was told that the clutch was gone and that they “might” cover it under warranty.  The typical OEM replacement cost is 1200-1500 bucks!  The first service guy I dealt with – not my usual representative – stated that “normally” the clutch is only covered by the 12month/12,000 mile portion of the warranty, that “abuse” lessens clutch life, and that he would have to get back to me with an estimate.  By abuse he meant launch starts and power shifting. The only racing I do is to Starbucks on the way to work, so the premature failure and his accusing demeanor pissed me off.

I went home and dug into my warranty and looked in the Subaru Forums online for similar premature failures.   Apparently, this short clutch life is an issue with the WRX that is well known and documented on the inter-webs. Additionally, my warranty categorically states that the clutch is a 3year/36K covered item.  I called the service rep the next morning to check on status and he continued with the “maybe” covered line so I faxed him a copy of my warranty on letterhead from the attorney we used for something last year with the section covering the clutch highlighted and 20+ pages of forum posts about the very same issue.  The service guy that I have dealt with for the one recall (minor tube replacement on the turbo) and all my oil changes called me right back, said he would be my point of contact from now on and told me that the car would be ready by noon and that ALL work would be 100% covered.  When I showed to pick up the car the first guy wouldn’t look at me and left the counter as soon as he could.  I get trying to save your company money, but being shady to do so is a sh!tty thing to do.

All that said, the dealership has been terrific every other time I have been there, so I am not ready to throw them under the bus just yet.  Currently, I have issue with that one employee and don’t think I should spew web-hate for the entire business because of one ass-monkey.  Also, even though the WRX is hard on clutches, it is not enough to make me want to get rid of mine or talk smack about it, but enough of an issue that I won’t let neophytes/relatives drive it. I still love and am thoroughly impressed with the car and the Subaru brand.

Bizarro Superman and my water bill

/ Matt Talley

Wtr_taxFor four months running we have had water bills over $100.  How can water be more expensive in Seattle, the land of continuous winter rain, than it is in Orange County, CA or in Phoenix, AZ‽‽  I can see where there might be a premium on rain boots or gutters, but water, really?  How much water can a two people that both work full time use?  I called up the City utility company  a couple of times, told them I checked for leaks in our system and was told that it was probably a “meter reading issue” and it would “straiten itself out” on the next scheduled read.  Nope.  I called again this week and was finally told that indeed Seattle residents pay higher rates than many dryer urban areas (i.e. the desert).  The utility worker I spoke with tried to end the conversation with “add to that the 10% surcharge…”  ‘What?  Hold on a minute, Surcharge for what?’ He then explained in a tired, well rehearsed and probably oft spoke speech that ‘the city illegally charged some past residents for something and the courts had ordered that current residents had to pay for the fines via this surcharge/TAX.’  All legal and court ordered…

I felt like a grizzly bear that someone was trying to explain Heaven to – I heard some words and funny sounds, but they meant nothing to me (that and I sort of wanted to tear someone’s arms off while biting them)…  My right eye started twitching from the pressure in my head caused by anger and outrage.  I ended the call with a courteous ‘thank you’ before my perverse sense of justice went pig-nuts wild and I unloaded on the poor public servant that probably has to pay the fee as well.  I then did a little research and this is what I found in the Seattle P-I archives:

City to OK water-bill surcharge

Fee will pay for court-ordered rebate checks

By KATHY MULADY
P-I REPORTER

The Seattle City Council is expected Tuesday to approve a surcharge on city water customers to help cover the cost of a $22 million court-ordered rebate to water customers.

The rebates are for fire hydrant costs that were wrongly charged to water customers. Fire hydrants are a basic city responsibility and have to be paid for from the general fund, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

Arthur Lane, a former Seattle city attorney who, together with Rud Okeson, filed about a half-dozen lawsuits against the city in recent years to protect the rights of ratepayers, called the council’s move “interesting.”

“It’s really ironic to say the least. I think that it is something we have to explore,” Lane said Friday.

Lane and Okeson won rebates for Seattle City Light customers several years ago in connection with the way streetlights were paid for. They have also challenged taxpayer spending for public art, and Seattle City Light reimbursements in connection with carbon footprints.

As a result of the latest court decision, anyone who was a Seattle Public Utilities water customer between March 2002 and December 2004 is due a refund under a court order issued in October. But current water customers will be the ones paying the bill.

Eligible water customers will get their full rebate in May or June. The surcharge and tax will be spread over 21 months.

By increasing the utility tax to cover the rebates, the city doesn’t have to spend money from the general fund, which covers most other city services.

The plan, proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels, comes at a sticky time. The city just approved a water rate increase in the fall, and council members aren’t anxious to add a new tax on top of it.

However, new revenue projections are expected in a few weeks, and it isn’t looking good. At least $25 million might have to be cut out of the general fund budget in the spring.

Six council members attending Friday’s Finance and Budget Committee meeting approved the plan to impose the surcharge. Councilman Bruce Harrell opposed the plan.

He said he wants the council to be more proactive in its approach to the budget and finding solutions.

“The easy thing would be to pass it on to the citizens. I suggest we slow it down and buy ourselves some strategic time,” said Harrell.

He suggested the council take more time to figure out how to pay the bill.

“I am trying to get them to protect the citizens in the tough economy,” Harrell said later.

More than $4 million of the lawsuit cost is for lawyer fees and interest that accrued while the city appealed the court decision.

Harrell said when the city was discussing water rate increases in the fall, the lawsuit and rebates didn’t come up.

To keep the surcharge amount slightly lower, Seattle Public Utilities will cut about $1.5 million from its budget, likely by freezing hiring in some positions and reducing some conservation and other programs temporarily.

“Calling this a rebate is not accurate,” City Council President Richard Conlin said. “The only party benefitting from this is the law firm that is going to get $4.2 million. “I have a hard time cutting $4 million out of the budget to pay these lawyer fees.”

Holy Crap!, what sort of Bizarro Superman-world was this solution thought up in?  “We, The City of Seattle, illegally billed water consumers and got caught, so we will let those same customers, pay for their own refund AND for the legal fees by “legally” taxing them…  Aside from the outrage I feel about this happening at all, I am more concerned right now about future issues that could be caused by this epic-FAIL.  The thing about surcharges, fees, taxes, and “rebates” is that once instated, they are never repealed without some serious grumbling and pitchfork waving.

Oh, the letter writing has begun!  I have started with a carefully worded note to each of the Seattle City Council members and one to our new mayor.  By itself this does little, but I will keep it up and do my dead-level best (I have always wanted to sit in during a city council meeting) to see that come Dec 31st 2010, this 10.2% of my water bill stays in my own pocket.  Just in case, I am getting the torches ready, riling up my fellow peasants, sharpening the stakes and laying plans to storm the castle.

KFC and the shite they now serve

/ Matt Talley

So every now and then my soul needs a little fried chicken – its a Southern thing.  Of all the fast food chicken shacks around, I prefer Popeye’s, but KFC will do in a pinch.  We picked up an order of strips and biscuits (there isn’t much better than a warm biscuit, packed with real butter and slathered with honey) at a joint somewhat near the house and I wasn’t able to enjoy the crispy fried goodness due to my outrage over the packet of honey provided for the biscuits.  Those bastards now sell “Honey Sauce” instead of real honey.  “Honey sauce” only has 11% real honey and is mostly High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Really, how much could a packet of honey cost KFC?!  If the price of honey is too great for them to bear, then please sell the packets to customers instead of providing fake honey – I would surely pay for the real stuff, honey being an actual food and all.

I dropped them a note on their customer site and will include the link below so that you too can tell them that Corn is not the same as honey.

honey sauseimg_2778-300x225

HERE is the KFC Customer Service Comment address.  Feel free to send your two-cents.

incompetent agent…

/ Matt Talley

As of today, it has been 102 days since our offer on the house was accepted by the seller and we still do not have keys in hand or even a fvckin’ closing date scheduled!?! Pissed is only part of the paragraph that describes our state right now. It also includes: frustrated, mad, stressed, resentful, hopeful, happy, disappointed, thwarted, cheerfully optimistic, defeated, vengeful, sad, expectant, sanguine, angry, optimistic, confident and 50 other descriptive adjectives that still do not fully capture it all. It seems that the selling agent that we have to rely on has been in a stupidity-induced coma for the last three months and did not even know the name of the second Mortgage (the house is in short sale with two Mortgages lenders…) holding bank until I sent it to her last week. We would LOVE to walk away and tell her to shove her commission, but we like the house, love the neighborhood, see a 100K in free equity in the near future, and if we pull out now, the chance of finding and closing on a place before the end of the year has about the same odds as Newark, NJ becoming crime free.

We have actually looked at other places and none of them have the mix of package and potential that this one does. SHIT!!!

Delivery of all our worldly goods

/ Matt Talley

It has been an exercise in patience and frustration. 99% of our worldly positions were shipped from Hamburg to Seattle via an ocean container ship. We went with a medium priced international moving company, Hasenkamp, that seemed to be professional enough, but appearances can be deceiving. On moving day, it was discovered that the moving company didn’t reserve a space for the container truck in front of our building on a very narrow, crowded, one-way cobblestone street. Parking reservation is the norm when moving apartments in Germany. We requested one when we first contacted the relocation company, so we figured it was their issue. The guys sent to pack were pissed at their office when they showed up and blamed the lady organizing everything from the comfort of her chair, saying that it had happened before… and for us not to worry, as they would work it out with the office. They called someone and swapped out for a smaller truck.

The movers were very meticulous in packing our stuff and overall we though they did a great job. We bought them lunch and drinks and stayed out of the way to let them just do their job. Fast forward 9-weeks and we get a demand for payment form the moving company, Hasenkamp, for $600 extra bucks ?!!??? This was after we had already paid them $6,500. The added bill was to pay for the labor hours for moving our goods from the small truck to the ocean freight container since without a reserved space the container truck couldn’t park on our street. The packers called the Hasenkamp office, not me, and told them to bring a smaller truck brought over. I thought it was no big deal and explained it all to the guy requesting funds, expecting an ’Oops, our bad!” sort of reply. Nope, what I got was a shit-storm of e-mail demanding the additional money and explanations defying all logic, arguing over how it was really our fault that the international logistics and moving company hadn’t reserved a parking spot after we contracted them to conduct a door to door move. Included in this correspondence were not-so-veiled threats about holding our goods until we paid, incurring $100 a day in additional costs. The whole time this was going on, Hasenkamp refused to give us the status and location of our property. It wasn’t until the very end of this terse correspondence that we discovered that our stuff had been in the US for weeks, had already cleared US Customs, and was about to start incurring storage fees at the port. It the end I had to pay ½ of their original requested amount, but MAN it pissed me off to do so!

The condition of our stuff was 95% perfect. Lots of padding and tape and cardboard. There were a couple of chipped glasses, two broken picture frames, odd scratches here and there, and the right arm of our couch got smashed/crushed in the container somehow. I took some pictures and turned it in on the insurance. (Five weeks later – no response from Hasenkamp. Fuck ‘em. I am turning it over to my insurer and will give them the Hasenkamp info. AllState will cut me a check and send Hasenkamp a nasty legal note demanding the funds for reimbursement. This is why one should have insurance – companies have entire legal departments to deal with these type of issues.)

I will link the whole demand for payment e-mail chain here. I will leave the company e-mail addresses intact on the mails, for general information purposes only, of course. It would be sad indeed if some automated web crawler spotted them and auto generated a mountain of SPAM/p0rn mail to those addresses… Hopefully I get a few web hits from someone searching for company information or from someone who is thinking about using Hasenkamp to move with. Additionally, I am going on a few of the expat forums in Europe and post all this again.

Make a customer happy and he MIGHT tell two people, piss a customer off and he WILL tell twenty…

The Un-Friendly Skies…

/ Matt Talley

I have been in the aviation industry for a while now and I have done more than my fair share of flying. In the time that I have spent flying for a living I have had my share of delays, missed flights, crappy third-world airports, rescheduled and cancelled flights, mechanical problems, chatty drunks, turbulence, irate passengers, screaming babies, “customers of size,” and one very scary emergency landing. I am a bit of an old hand in dealing with air travel and very little phases me. Recently, I had an experience that left me shaking my head in wonder at the heartlessness and compliancy of a major US airline: Continental

I was flying into Arkansas for a summer visit with the kids. I arrived without issue in Newark and after an eight hour layover; I expected to make a connecting flight to Little Rock that night at 8:00. About 7:30 I and the other assembled passengers were told by a gate agent that our flight was postponed due to inclement weather until 9:00. Around 8:40pm the gate agent left and we did not see another one for the rest of the evening. Our flight was postponed an additional 3 times with the departures screen and at 12:30am a cancellation notice was broadcast over the intercom system. We were instructed to go to a Continental Airlines Customer Service Desk for flight rescheduling or to call the 800 reservations number. I stood in line from 12:30 to 3:30am. I phoned the Continental Reservations office while waiting in line and it took over an hour to get through – I am sure because of the volume of calls from my fellow passengers stranded in line with me. I was told that I had been automatically rescheduled to the 8:00pm Sunday flight. I was also told that there were no available open Continental flights out of Newark for Saturday. When I asked to be moved to another airline, I was told that it could not be done over the phone and would have to be taken care of at the service desk. So… I stayed in the line, which at 3:00am stretched down an entire wing of the terminal and was 400+ people strong.

At 3:30am the staff at the service area shut down their computers and left the desk with roughly 170 people still in our line – the bulk of the other customers waiting had been sent to another gate in another hall. A cynic would say it was because the airline wanted to split the herd so that we wouldn’t stampede when the shutdown came. People in the front of the line were begging for assistance we were told very loudly by one representative that she had been dealing with “us” for over eight hours, was tired, and was going home. Some of the passengers in that line including myself had already been in-transit for over 22 hours and knew all about being tired… When the Continental employees left, the lights in the area were shut off and we were all left to fend for ourselves with all the food establishments closed. There was no attempt to make any kind of arrangements for passengers, even those of us travelling internationally: no alternate accommodations, no blankets, no pillows, no snacks, and seemingly no thought given to those of us left in line. In addition, we were told that if we left the airport that we might not be able to enter again as our tickets were for cancelled flights and that it would be best if we stayed put until new tickets could be sorted out the next morning. The lights were then turned off and all Continental personnel left the area. There were a couple people who took some really damning pictures of the state of things that night: passengers huddled together still in line at 5:00 am, A couple asleep on the floor beside the wife’s wheelchair, a mother sobbing (who was a Continental flight attendant on maternity leave…) because she had run out of diapers and baby food for her infant.

The Continental Service Desk did not open at 4:30 like we were told it would as the service representatives made their hasty exit. We had to wait until almost 6:00am before staff reappeared. I was rescheduled for a 7:00am flight to Houston and then an additional connection flight to Little Rock. When I spoke to the reservation representative to schedule the flight out of Newark, I was told that my return flight had been upgraded because of my SkyTeam Elite status (all those miles flown have to count for something) and because of the continued delays. I appreciated this gesture. When I arrived at the gate we were told that no flight crew was available for the 7:00 flight and it was rescheduled four times before we finally got a flight crew just before mid day. Although numerous passengers requested assistance we were not provided with blankets or water or any flight information until 10ish when an airport representative arrived and assured us that we would leave Newark before noon. He also arranged for soft drinks and peanuts for us after a near mutiny by the gate agents and a bunch of screaming by passengers demanded some help.

My connecting flight from Houston to Little Rock was also rescheduled due to a mechanical problem with the First-Class entertainment system. I arrived in Little Rock almost twenty-four hours after my originally scheduled arrival and after nearly forty total hours of travel time. Once in Little Rock, I learned that my luggage was still in Newark and I did not receive it until later. Great…

A couple of weeks later, after a great visit with my son, I started my journey home to Germany. After arriving at the Little Rock Airport I found that my flight had been cancelled and I again was rerouted through Houston. Continental Airlines was at that point not on the top of my list of my favorite US carriers… The gate agent in Little Rock had no record of any promised upgrade. I was told to discuss it with Customer Service in Houston or Newark. My flight from Houston to Newark was completely full and I was told that I needed to discuss any promise of upgrade with the Newark staff. After arriving in Newark I went back to the Customer Service area and was told that I would have had to have been given a certificate at the time of the incident that there was nothing that they could do. I was told to call the Continental WECARE number to make any sort of complaint. It was if I had at that moment ceased to matter, the woman just sort of shoved the card with the WECARE info on it at me and turned to finish a conversation about her house with a co-worker. Continental has this slogan that the print on all there posters and ads: Work Hard. Fly Right. Really?! Neither was my experience with Continental Airlines or their staff in Newark!

I called while sitting in the Newark airport waiting for my next flight to notify Continental Customer Service of the incident and was told that upgrades on flights to Europe are NEVER given and are not even allowed in this type of situation. I was shocked by this and felt that the customer service agent that rescheduled my flight had purposely lied to me so that I would be happy just long enough to exit the airport where I was no longer a Continental concern. The WECARE telephone agent offered to send me an international care package for my inconvenience, but after checking she could only offer to mail me a US domestic one to my home in Germany. Great, two free drinks and a pair of headphones for domestic flights in a country that I don’t reside in and on an airline that I have grown to detest. By the way, my bags got lost on the trip home too. At least Continental is consistent…

This experience was so crappy solely because of the almost complete lack of customer service that I experienced at multiple levels. Delays are understandable, but a lack of empathy for passengers stuck in transit is shameful. I wrote Continental a letter, not looking for a handout or for a perk, but to draw their attention to a breakdown in their organization in Newark. I had hoped that it would be addressed and that other passengers that have the misfortune of delayed or cancelled flights in Newark in the future find the process to get them to there destination much less painful and frustrating than the process that I experienced. After nearly a month, I received a semi-well crafted form letter, complete with an auto-generated signature that calmly spelled out how everything that we experienced in Newark was “completely out of Continental’s control.” I almost choked as I read the customer service manager’s response. In addition to her letter following the basic tenets of an unsatisfied customer response letter: Empathize with the customer, restate their position/experience back to them as a sign that you have taken interest, apologize for their upset, assure them that ‘management’ would be notified, and ask them for their continued support. She had the balls to state that, “Continental employees worked tirelessly around the clock… in an extraordinary effort to accommodate our customers as quickly and safely as possible…” Really?! I doubt that any of the 400 or so people left abandoned at the Continental Customer Care desk overnight to sleep on the cold, stained concrete floor would agree.

As I said, I wrote my first letter in the hope that it would cast a light on a single failure at a single point in time for hundreds of passengers who were in Continental’s care. I did not ask to be reimbursed for anything or for any sort of freebie, as that was not my intent in writing them. It was my hope that this failure would be acknowledged and steps would be taken so that it would not happen to other travellers in the same situation with that airline in the future. The response I got just tells me that it was not an isolated incident and that there is a flaw in the Continental customer service system. I was not pleased.

I have a problem letting things go… It is one of those things about my personality that could either be considered endearing or a flaw… New Travel Rule: Stay the Hell away from Newark and only board a Continental flight in a case of Rapture, but pack a snack, because you will be routed through Houston and will be the last to arrive at the Pearly Gates.