I used to work at an airline. One of the Big 6 Usian ones. While I was watching the weather last weekend, I felt badly for my friends who still work there. One night a few years ago, when there was BAD snow and we had cascading cancellations ahead of the storm (sometimes the hub system bites) we were ALL on mandatory overtime. I was on the 430 pm to 130 am shift, (normally the last shift of the day) but they held us over to work, especially international agents because we were recovering from the killer snowstorms in Europe. This was the that bad winter a few years ago where they got snow in England and Italy and all the spots in between...
So we're in our last hour of legality and we all get to go in late the next day, since it's now going on 7 am.... And we're rebooking as best we can, and explaining to people that even if we did have seats leaving today, the chances of those flights going out on schedule are kind of in the negative numbers. And people are bitchy and mad because of course the airlines control the weather! (Y'all did know that, right? Airlines totally control the weather!) I'm on call work time because I need a brain break and I hear one of my friends saying the following, through gritted teeth.
"Yes sir, I am certain we have no planes leaving this morning."
"Yes sir, I'm aware there's only 10 inches of snow out there, but you'll be flying into a blizzard. That's why we cancelled your flight."
"No sir, there are no planes leaving Hartford for the West Coast today."
"Sir, I'm pretty sure that if you DO walk over to the other side of the airport and look out the windows of the other terminal, you'll find that it IS snowing on that side of the airport too."
By now, the whole freaking bay is howling with laughter, because we've been dealing with this crap ALL night long and we'd gotten to the slap-happy and goofy stagee around 4 am. The poor man (and I did kinda feel bad for him yells "What the hell is so funny bitch! What are you laughing about?" so loud we can all hear it and then Lisa starts giggling so hard she can hardly talk. She's gasping out "I'm so -- sorry-- sir--- we've just -- been up all night" between giggles and we're all just dying from laughter. She says "oh no Sir-- it's really not -- giggle wheeze-- funny. --snerk--- I swear, I'm taking this very --giggle snort!-- seriously" By now we have a supervisor over to see why we're all dying here. The supe (who was awesome! Our night time supervisor was great!) just walked around and started turning off our phone boxes... She grabs Lisa's head set and says "Well sir, I understand you're unhappy about the weather. Sadly, we can't turn the snow off for you...." By this time, Lisa's lost the seats she was trying to get so he's stuck another three days in Hartford. She pulls the head set off because he's shouting again, and we hear him saying "I'll see you all in Hell Bitch!" and the supe puts the head set back on and says "well, Sir, I see you're having a bad day. Why don't you take some time to get settled down and call back.. Thanks for calling Awesome Airlines" and hangs up on him. It was so darn funny because we were only allowed to hang up on the obscene callers, and only after we'd asked them for a res.
Even though it was mandatory overtime, she sent us all out about 20 minutes before she was supposed to because we were so done. Even now, when a customer's getting snarky, there's still a running joke at that reservation center about "Well, let me just run over to the other side of the airport and check the weather for you."
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