I was snippy. When scanning my boarding pass as part of Main Cabin 1 to get on the plane, I got pulled aside to have my passport checked. Apparently scanning it online when I checked in yesterday and this morning at the airport wasn’t sufficient… or the various databases aren’t synced or something. But I was annoyed that this was the THIRD time my passport had to be scanned… and I lost my place in boarding. With visions of my carry-on not fitting in any remaining overhead bins and having to be “courtesy checked” to my final destination “for free” (ugh), I slouched over to the gate agent and showed her my passport. For the third time. And I know I was a snippy, snitty, whiny, awful, arrogant, annoying traveler. But I was annoyed and felt like once again an airline saw me not as a person, or even a customer, but as cargo that could be shoved, dropped, flipped, and mangled as if I were a suitcase in the hold.
So I was a jerk to this gate agent. And even as it was happening, I knew I was being a jerk but also being human I didn’t give a flying fig. It was only after I had boarded and found an overhead bin that I could toss my bag that I took a breath and realized this poor gate agent was only doing her job. It wasn’t her fault that the faceless airline bureaucracy was awful. This wasn’t Nuremberg for goodness sake; it was perfectly acceptable in this case that she was just following orders. And I shouldn’t have been a jerk.
In my head, I was composing an email to Delta to explain that I’d really like to apologize to the gate agent working flight 811, LAX to JFK. As I was doing so, a frazzled woman had to get into the middle seat next to me. She had missed her flight in the morning because her son had overslept and hadn’t picked her up and with a last-minute uber ride she was only able to check her luggage but not get to the gate on time. This after having paid for the mileage multiplier and upgrade to business class. Now she was saddled with a middle seat way back in Basic Economy… and with a later flight delayed all the more so on the tarmac, she was really pushing it to make it from JFK to Penn Station for her 8:55 PM train upstate for a wedding. She was having a day. And as I heard asking the flight attendant if there were any open seats a bit farther up if only so she could deplane sooner to try and make her train, I thought of Karma, of consequences, of the small random acts of gestures and kindness that might make the world a bit better.
I offered her my aisle seat, telling her it wasn’t much but was at least better than a middle seat. She was clearly touched and appreciative that anyone would offer anything on a day of mishaps and declined… but we struck up a conversation. She really had been having a day and a half. Her wireless Apple headphones were dead and she didn’t have the adapter to plug them directly into the mini-jacks. I had a spare set but they were from AirChina and had the two-prong interface rather than the single one. She wound up having to pay $2 for a pair. Amidst her charges for upgrading, she had also pre-paid for WiFi on her flight… but for some reason, that didn’t carry over to this one so she had to re-purchase WiFi access to get some work done that had come in at the last minute. The Uber ride had cost her $135 to get to LA… and even with that exorbitant fare she didn’t make the flight. Despite the setbacks and frustrations, she was incredibly nice and a strong proponent of karma herself; I felt like if any good karma came my way from the smallest of gestures in offering her a seat, I would prefer it go right back to her to make sure she makes her train. If this were a TV commercial, it’d be like a Discover card karma credit plan with karma back savings.
***
Every so often you come across people who remind you that the world is not a cesspool of selfishness and a depressing land of obliviousness. Shay (surname redacted) is one of those people who is a good soul having a bad day. I like to think I’m a good soul… but I know I’ve had bad days. And sometimes all it takes is a brief moment, the tiniest of efforts to try and break a bad day’s cycle and turn it around. I’m not sure I did much for Shay other than provide a knowing nod and a friendly ear – sometimes that’s all we need.
Between her vodka and cranberries and my Diet Coke, we chatted about life and (mis)-adventures. She’s an entrepreneur with a wonderful children’s book on loss and grief… and ways kids can cope and find comfort in the future even in the face of tragedy. She’s also working on a vegan restaurant idea that struck me as a terrific venture. But I’m kinda her target audience – delicious vegan burgers with street-style grilled onions and veggies? I’ll take four. We likely won’t ever see each other again (I having abandoned social media wouldn’t even know where to look for her, albeit I did scribble down her name for trivia purposes – more on that in a moment). And yet I like to think in the four or five hours we were stuck on an airplane together, we both helped one another find balance in the universe. In this chaotic world of rising despots, threats to democracy, and bloody headlines the likes of which I can’t recall in my lifetime, it was a good reminder that just because so much of the news is negative and antagonistic and vitriolic, doesn’t mean we the people need to be. We can rise above. We can strive for the world we wish was for everyone.
But a quick word on trivia. I can’t even remember how this came up – maybe it was because she was supposed to be up in business class and instead was stuck with me in steerage. But she asked me if I knew what the word “posh” meant. I gave some lame definition about high class and high maintenance excess or something or other. And she said, sure, sure… but did I know what it meant? Apparently “posh” is like “snafu” in that it’s actually an acronym that’s taken on meaning itself. Shay had to text her mom to double check as she only remembered the first part – “Port Out, something… something.” Her mom was sleeping back in LA though was due to hit happy hour at 3 PM (a detail which I loved hearing) so she knew she’d be up soon and could reply to us soon enough. Apparently the whole thing is “Port Out, Starboard Home.” It refers to the preferred cabins on British ships sailing east – the theory being that the sun fell on the port side on the way out and on the starboard side on the way home, thus you wanted your cabin there for each leg of the journey. So, while it refers to uppercrust living, it also has an etymological significance I never knew.
I wondered what “karma” might be in such a scenario and the closest I can come up with is “Kevin’s Acting Rotten, [but] Makes Amends.”
This post and all that came before serve as my attempt to make amends.
Oh — and Shay – a pre-your-friend’s-wedding toast: I hope you’re long settled on the train before the conductor calls “all aboard!” And may your last minute eBay bid net you that vegan food truck that’s for sale in Florida.
Also — please don’t be too hard on your son – we occasionally let out moms down! But hopefully we make up for it before too long.
***
Post Script — I hurriedly tapped out an email to Delta about the flight crew and it was filled with typos as I was trying to get it off before they shut the cabin door on my connecting flight:
And this was Delta’s reply:
Karma. Consequences.