Monday, January 4, 2010

Management Think #8

OK, I refuse to fly commercial on Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends. The crowds are unreal and weather usually leaves 10’s if not 100’s of thousands people stranded at airports each year spending their holidays sleeping on the airport floor eating vending machine food.

However, I thought I would be safe flying home for New Years.

I cashed in frequent flyer miles so the times you get to fly are a little weird. I had to come back north Sunday morning which makes sense as LOTS of biz travelers head out Sunday evening so planes are generally full then. I figured at 8:00 AM Sunday morning the place would be deserted.

Wrong!



(sorry, it's not a good picture)

Oh, you can only see about 65% of the line from here it trails off a ways to the right.. When I first walked in the door I thought, “WOW, Cinnabon is doing a roaring trade this morning!” As I came around the corner and got a better angle my heart sank as I realized no, this is MY line!

Click on the picture to enlarge it then look carefully under the arrow. That long line just leads to the beginning of the “rats maze” look inside their alcove, there are at least 100 people in the “maze”.

Of course, if I could just print out my boarding pass I would not need to be in this line but reference last weeks post about the evil cabal of Rob Johnson’s in this world so I had to stand in this line.

Now, since I knew I was going to have “TSA Issues” I got there 1 ½ before my flight left.

It took an hour and 40 minutes to get through this line.

So why is this post called “Management Think”? I would like to point out to Southwest Airlines managers everywhere that nowadays they have these things called “Computers” It is VERY easy for you to know you sold a shit load of tickets this Sunday morning and your normal complement of 2 people working the ticket counter was probably not going to cut it this Sunday Morning.

7 comments:

jinksto said...

I think taking pictures in airports is against one of the new "secret laws"... lucky you didn't get arrested!

NerdyRedneck Rob said...

Jinksto - oops I did not know about that particular secret law!

kat said...

Flying these days has just become a big nuisance. With the hightened security and the shoe bombers and eejits who walk through controls the wrong way etc. all of that makes life for us "normal" passengers a living hell. Sorry you had to put yourself through that mess on a sunday morning.

mattkendrick.com said...

So much for their current slogan "It's On." On like what? Donkey Kong? Or It's On like a slow passing train? Hang in there!

tammy said...

That sucks.

If you write a letter to SWA complaining, you might get free stuff. Maybe. It's been known to happen.

I hate that they cut back on people working the counters too.

Erika said...

It's okay Nerdy -- you weren't actually IN the airport to take the photo (you were still lined up outside, right?) Did you know in Toronto they used to walk up the waiting line asking for passengers for particular flights so they would get them through first? Now look -- EVERYBODY can miss their plane so they all have to be rebooked! (what FUN!)

NerdyRedneck Rob said...

Kat- Well, it *was* getting to be a fairly dull routine so long as you jumped through the hoops like the well trained lap dogs “we the people” have become. Now they have rearranged the hoops though! :(

Matt- it is on… eventually! :)

Tammy- I am still waiting on my free stuff- YOU were supposed to send me a SWA hat! :) ;)

Erika- 1) the topic is “management think” and what you said was WAY too logical to qualify! :) 2) Then there would only be one person left on the ticket counter! ;)