Furthermore, before I begin what promises to be a rant worthy of an Upton Sinclair novel, let me say that the flight crew - from the captain to our attendants - on our flight from Chicago was tremendous. They were attentive and took care of their travelers' needs. Then we got to gate C19 at Dulles - that's where this tail of woe truly begins. The flight crew had a request for five wheelchairs to meet the flight. The agent in charge of the gate (a decidedly selfish hobgoblin with a Jersey Shore accent) said, "no, only four were requested." I showed him my ticket where it was listed that we had requested a wheelchair for Dad. He said, and I quote, "he can just take my arm and we'll stroll up to the seats in the terminal." You pretentious twit, my dad wouldn't take your arm if he needed an arm transplant.
Not to be defeated, Dad used his cane to make his way up the jet way ramp. We asked the Jersey Shore profligate to call for a chair and he said, "five, ten minutes tops." He was wrong, like, Titanic-on-the-ocean wrong.
The flight (to which the airline had failed to deliver its galley supplies, so drinks were, at best, in limited supply and options), was loading to continue its way to Orlando. My dad had to use the bathroom, so I told the unprincipled neddy (that’s not a typo, Google it) now in charge of boarding the flight that Dad had to go to the restroom, but that I would call "Marco," and the wheelchair people could answer, "Polo!" if we weren't back from the impeccably maintained crappers at Dulles (does the sarcasm drip off that sentence? I ask because the sarcasm should be dripping off that sentence) before they got there.
We got back from the bathroom and, hold your breath, no wheelchair, but the Orlando flight was boarding, so I went up to the gate and, in a voice somewhere between talking to a friend at a crowded bar and cheering at a football game, started asking my friend the boarding agent if he'd really called. He attempted to actively ignore me, so I began asking passengers boarding the plane if they'd seen an empty wheelchair anywhere. When the agent saw that, he tried to intervene, but I told him, "it's rude to interrupt." At that point, he got on the intercom and called for an Airserv (yeah, no "e," because corporations love misspellings) supervisor to, "report to gate C19, Charlie-one-nine." At the same time, I was tweeting like mad to @[theairlineinquestion] (who, as of this writing, has asked for a confirmation number this morning, so they can investigate - we'll see how the cyber-incompetence measures up to that of the real world.). Then, I called the customer service number for [theairlineinquestion] and sifted through the holds and transfers until I talked to a lady who said she would try to call someone in the airport, but to please hold. As I held, I wished the people boarding the plane bound for Orlando a safe trip and warned them of the dangerous wheelchair-shortage clearly facing our airways. The vile boarding agent was beginning to look at me the way you look at an approaching car that won't dim its brights at night. (I'll admit, that stirred slight satisfaction in me.)
That's when a veritable fleet of empty wheelchairs approached, pushed by people who clearly just can't wait to get to work in the morning. "Anybody here for C-19?" None of them so much as looked at me. "C-19? Charlie nineteen?" No answer, "Marco!" I yelled. No response. They kept rolling, mindless drone automatons striding right past us.
Mind you, I'm still on hold with [not States of America] Airline’s customer service, and now the passengers headed for Orlando are taking an interest in my dad's plight (possibly because I put the hold music on speakerphone). The ticket agent was, at this point, trying to get people to check the bags they had designated for carry on because there might not be room on the plane for all the luggage the passengers and their bags. “Anybody checking a wheelchair?” I asked, in my inside voice this time. The ticketing agent, looking as if he had suddenly realized he had a rock in his shoe, again paged an Airserv supervisor. It was at that moment that the person at [the-airline-that-shall-not-
“What is the nature of your problem, Mr. Moss?” I explained, in my I’m-on-speaker-phone-and-I-
The lady I was talking to said she had called the numbers for Airserv at Dulles, but no one had picked up. I responded that no one had picked up my dad, so “not picking up” was the Airserv business model, as far as I could tell. She, again, put me on hold. As we (by “we” I mean everyone at gates C-19, C-20, C-22, and C-24) again listened to the dulcet tones of Hall and Oates as interpreted for the oboe I saw an Airserv employee meandering (yes, meandering – going no place in a hurry) while she was pushing an empty wheelchair down the main thoroughfare. I veritably leaped in front of her (why I wasn’t met with the tingly freshness of mace, I’ll never know) and asked her if she were free to transfer my dad to baggage claim. She nodded her assent and I turned to the ticket agent, who was now actively ignoring me, and yelled from twenty feet away, “hey, I got it; personal accountability and all, I got it. I’m leaving, but I’m gonna MISS YOU most of all. I hope the Wizard gives you a heart!” This got a stifled laugh from one of the passengers bound for Orlando and I, again, found a small measure of smug satisfaction in the sea of indifference in which I was afloat.
I turned to the wheeler (not sure that’s the right word) and called, “lead on, Madame!”
After we had gone a few hundred yards (with the young lady setting a blistering pace even slower than her aforementioned “meandering”) the customer service agent (EVERYbody’s an agent nowadays) picked back up. “I continue to call, Mr. Moss, but no one is pic-, uh, answering my calls.” I informed her that I had taken matters into my own hands in a move reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon and procured both chair and driver. “Awesome!” was her response.
“No, not awesome, ridiculous! We notified the airline we needed a wheelchair, none was provided, and I had to fairly accost the lady with this one so my dad could ride in it. How is THAT awesome?”
The customer service agent tried to respond to my (admitted rhetorical) question when we (the wheeler, my dad, and I) entered an elevator. All I got was, “Sir, I underst-,” and she was lost among dropped calls and angry passenger complaints afloat in the ether.
The young lady piloting the wheelchair (we learned that she was from the Sudan and lived in a house with several members of her family – by several, I mean all of them) led us through a maze of elevators and moving sidewalks to the subterranean monorail Dulles uses to move visitors from the terminal to the gates where they queue them like cattle as they await their group’s boarding call. The train did, in fact, move faster than the lady had propelled the wheelchair, so that was a positive.
We eventually made it to the baggage claim…it had taken so long that someone had taken our rolling suitcase from the carousel (number six, I’ll have you know) and left it standing like some antisocial anchorite among the crowded baggage claim. After the skycaps at [the-airline-that-shall-not-
I retrieved the bag from its destitution and pulled it to where the wheeler (yes, I think that’s now a word for “one who pushes a wheelchair” - alert the people at Websters, or at least Urban Dictionary) and my dad waited in front of a window whose glass was showing the first few streaks of raindrops. I left the bag with Dad and headed for Garage 2, Section 3J. Luckily, the storm held off just long enough for me to get a few steps from Dulles’ signature overhanging portico before the rain began to fall in earnest. It was a horrendous storm, a deluge worthy of Noah and his floating zoo. Water immediately began puddling, at least whatever water didn’t find its way to the trickle-turned-river than ran down my back. After a mere five hundred yards, I entered the relative cover of the parking garage. I found my car (which required the use of my “PANIC” button, my own car alarm-driven version of “Marco Polo”) and went back to pick up Dad…he wasn’t at the spot I’d left him. In fact, the lady with the wheelchair and the titubating gate had abandoned my father and he made his way (by cane and tugging the suitcase behind him) to “Door Six.”
Here’s my problem, all the doors where I went were labeled “one” through “four.” I drove around and around until a missed turn took me down a paved road (maybe it was a paved sidewalk, I don’t know; nor do I care) and saw before me doors designated “one” through “six.” In front of the sixth door sat Dad on a concrete parking pylon, barely skirting the rain while the suitcase (not so lucky) sat in the rain. Finally loaded up in my Toyota, Dad and I departed the nightmarish Dulles Airport and drove into the teeth of a weather system that made national news the next day (Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning noted that the storms “rocked the eastern United States”).
Indeed, Mr. Rose, they rocked the eastern United States; and I drove us home in them.
Onward rolls the wagon, no boarding pass necessary. In case of emergency, oxygen masks will deploy from the ceiling; but, I’m not telling how to work the seat belt works - if you can’t use it, you may just prove Darwin right. Regardless, thanks for riding shotgun.
