As my chum Bard Sinister points out, the comment feature is acting up again. It’ll time out after you click Post, and seemingly nothing happens. However, in actuality the tiny virtual hamsters that run this site are still running in their wheels, and the post gets updated with the new comment. So if you hit “Post” a second time, as I did earlier today, you get 2 posts for the price of one. Argh. I’ll look into why that may be happening – might have been a temporary glitch. Also, due to a strange conversational convergence, comments were going up…
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I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. Yesterday was from hell. I kept getting sidetracked by more and more issues and then I’d get reminded of all the extra stuff I have to keep an eye on with my TL out of town, and I got out of there at almost 645pm. One of the international travelers completely rebooked her India itinerary. Twice! I was ready to come through the phone and smack her, because in the end it was the same way I booked it to start with, except with a stopover in London.…
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I’m not quite as “angy” as I was last Friday – but today was another non-stop fun-filled whirl as I tried to get the one group locked down. Still waiting for the “disorganizer” (the secretary responsible for the crapload of inconsistencies otherwise known as the group file) to get back to me with the final travel dates and plans of a couple of people. I did get some relatively final lists (with cancellations I’d never heard about before today) faxed to the hotels and talked to some actual human contacts at each hotel. International wasn’t so bad – two more…
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I was very, very angy and stressed out today. All week, I’ve been unable to settle into some kind of routine with all the new duties (most of which don’t play well together, so multi-tasking is right out). Also, all week I’ve been pulled about 6 different directions a day looking at someone’s malfunctioning screen, key, or non-priceable international record. Some of my cow-orkers are great people who are much better than I am at masking their own stress and not hosing it about in great gouts like I do. Some of them are great at picking up the slack…
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A US-bound flight from Sydney turned back on Tuesday after a note found on board raised fears of a bomb threat, Australia’s government said. Flight UAL840, carrying 246 passengers and bound for Los Angeles, landed safely back in Sydney airport nearly three hours after take-off. Okay, that’s interesting. I looked up the flight information in SABRE for this flight, and it’s described as a crew issue. ¤QUA/2840/27JUL« UA RESPONSE F:UA840/27JUL MEL/2029CT/OFF 1129A .14E SYD/0503CT/IN 550P 5.00L ‡DPTS CNCLD LAX/0504CT/ARVS CNCLD ‡ETD 100P OT JFK/0504CT/ETA 927P OT SYD/WAS OFF SYD 257P - RETURNED TO FIELD DUE TO CREW SYDLAX/PSGR PROT -…
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Huh – this is probably not good for the travel industry overall: WASHINGTON (AP) — United Airlines on Monday lost a bid to secure a federal loan guarantee, a fresh setback to the carrier’s efforts to emerge from bankruptcy. The decision by a federal panel barred the airline from making any other attempts to secure government backing.
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***Dave pointed me at the Senate testimony of Patricia Friend, president of a flight attendants’ association: We are trained to fight fires in the air, to administer first aid, to evacuate an aircraft in case of an accident, deal with abusive passengers and to give comfort. We receive comprehensive training in how to handle all these situations onboard the aircraft and are now officially recognized for these roles through FAA certification. Unbelievably, almost three years after the horrific events of September 11th, 2001 we still have not been trained to appropriately handle a security crisis onboard on our airplanes. Okay,…
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A Northwest Airlines flight that was headed to Rapid City, South Dakota, landed a few miles off course at Ellsworth Air Force Base, and passengers had to wait in the plane for more than three hours while their crew was interrogated. Passengers on Northwest Flight 1152, an Airbus A-319 from St. Paul, expected to be welcomed to Rapid City Regional Airport on Saturday, but after about five minutes they were told to close their window shades and not look out, said passenger Robert Morrell. OOPS! Well, that story will be making the rounds at work tomorrow. And hey, I’ll bet…
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My cow-orker Bovina has returned from her vacation or family leave or whatever. She normally logs in at 830, but is always here way, way early. So this morning she put her name on the sign up sheet for “down-time” (an unpaid time off request) at 8:15 frickin ACK EMMA. She wasn’t even officially “here” yet. A fact that was pointed out to her, in a joking/not really joking way, by a couple of other people. The fact that she signs up every day there’s a down-time list posted has become a joke to more than a few folks. I…
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cow orker n. [Usenet] n. fortuitous typo for co-worker, widely used in Usenet, with perhaps a hint that orking cows is illegal. This term was popularized by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) but already appears in the January 1996 version of the scary devil monastery FAQ. There are plausible reports that it was in use on talk.bizarre as early as 1992. Compare hing, grilf, filk, newsfroup. There are co-workers and cow-orkers. I work with both types. Many of the latter are parents and think that everything that their child produces is interesting. I beg to differ. It’s difficult to…