Traveling is stressful. And no matter how hard you try to avoid it you are inevitably going to encounter people who unnecessarily raise that stress level. These people cleverly disguise themselves as those who are supposed to help you and expedite your travel process (i.e. the employee at your rental car company, the woman at the front desk of your hotel, or the TSA representative at the airport), but do not be fooled. These people WILL take away precious and irreplaceable minutes of your life. Being the educated person you are you will become aware of the ridiculous hold ups being forced upon you. And when these people sense that you’ve caught on, they will no doubt appeal to a higher power (company policy), point fingers at co-workers, or blame you. If you are lucky you will only be held up by one of these disguised allies one time per trip. Or if you are me you will meet one at each step of your travel process. As was the case with my recent trip to Washington.
It all started with the rental car company. The rental car company that pointed to their company policy of asking everyone to pile their luggage outside of the building to ensure time efficiency inside. Now I can only speak for my luggage, but I know my carry-on didn’t rent a car. As I move, the bag moves as well. No one was going to be waiting for it to get its rental terms, causing little to no hold up. But Enterprise saw the pile of luggage accumulating directly in front of the shuttle door, releasing customers to the building (hello obstacle course for tired and irritated travelers), to be a way to speed up the wait. Want to speed up the wait? Don’t give every customer a personalized escort to their choice of vehicle. Don’t give them a brief history and tutorial on their options. And don’t give them a rundown on the stain in the backseat of the car that you “just can’t seem to get rid of”.
Next, the woman at the front desk of the Fidalgo Inn. The woman who, after we requested to be moved from our room that faced a noisy highway, blamed a co-worker for forgetting to ask about our traffic noise sensitivity. Do not blame your co-worker for not checking on a made-up disorder such as traffic noise sensitivity. And please do not waste our time by interrogating us about our later arriving family members. It is not time efficient, nor normal, to want to know the first, middle and last names of my relatives, which rooms they are going to be sleeping in, what their relation is to each other, their likes and dislikes. As a customer grows obviously irritated with your insistence on useless information do not justify yourself by boasting of the high security available at the hotel. If by high security you mean each room is easily accessible to anyone from the outside, then yes you offer the highest security.
My trip rounded out nicely at the airport. Where I was targeted as holding up the line. I don’t think throwing a zip –lock baggie at me when I have one free standing bottle of face wash set next to my iPod, in plain sight to show I have no secrets, and then announcing to everyone, “we do not want to slow down the line by not having liquids in zip-lock baggies” lowers the stress of airport security (especially for us hesitant flyers). And do not insinuate that my 3.4-ounce face wash is holding up the line when you stop all bags from moving forward on the conveyer belt while you do a hand search of a man’s backpack. If the backpack is out of the machine and taken to the side, the man forfeits his spot in the security line. There are no “spot-backs” at the airport.
As you can see I experienced a triple threat weekend in Washington. My life was negatively affected by three different travel aids. With the individuals causing the inconvenient and pointless delays blaming everyone (including me) but themselves, I can see why my mother travels with a personal wine opener.
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