While it is generally against ever instinct I have to Blog, as I honestly feel the desire to go on and on about the little day to day nothings of your life a bit bizarre, here I am writing a blog. I mean seriously, what sort of person believes everyone else really cares or needs to know what is going on in their lives?
So anyway, this past week I've been in Atlanta. Finally, and I do mean finally, we left for the airport to go home and our 5 1/2 days stuck in the corporate office were over. We parked ourselves at the Sam Adams Bar right next to our departure gate. And I mean right next as we were sitting withing 10 feet of our gate. As we arrived a good hour and a half before departure we sat down to eat and have a few beers while periodically sending someone from our party of 6 over every 15 minutes or so to check departure time.
At around 7:52 PM they announced boarding, and the board read a departure time of 8:10 PM. We called for our tab paid it and walked the few feet to the departure gate arriving at 7:59 as someone from Delta was closing the door. When we tried to go through it he informed us Delta policy was to stop boarding 10 minutes before anticipated departure and refused us entry. There were three from my party and two others trying to get on the plain but he refused to budge. Now I understand following rules and realistically he had no choice. However, as we had checked with him 4 times in the previous hour about departure time why did he not mention that Delta's policy in Atlanta was to stop boarding at 10 minutes before departure. Plus, when the first three from our group entered the plane seconds before us Tina explained there were three others right behind them. We actually called Dave within the plain and tried to get him to convince them to let us on. No chance.
My two colleagues were very upset, especially as Ray's 18 month old daughter had been injured that week and he was none to happy about being several states away when his daughter had been taken to the hospital.
Thankfully after about 10 minutes on the phone with a Delta representative we were able to get on Standby for the only plane flying to NE Ohio that night. The only other option being wait til 8:40 AM the next day.
But of course that meant taking the shuttle over to another concourse, as walking around Atlanta airport just is not an option, and sitting there for another hour and a half hoping.
I was 4th on the list, with Ray 3rd and Rick 5th. To make a long story short we all made standby, and actually wound up upgraded to 1st Class. But it was still an annoying evening.
