I have a message to call my least favorite admin, who waffles indecisively and has one of those “what if?” guys, as in “What if I fly to Nanjing instead of Shanghai? What if I stop in Munich before Milan?” What if you tell me no more changes and I issue the ticket?? Grr.
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I confess that I’m not a nice, forgiving person. I grumble and swear under my breath at work all the time. The last hour of my day, I am even less forgiving and more grumbly, because I resent anything that slows me down and prevents me from getting done those things that cannot be left undone. There are certain people who are incapable of learning from their mistakes, after repeated ass-saving. I often end up staying late fixing other peoples’ mistakes, partly from a misguided belief on my part that it helps the travelers avoid a bad experience, and partly from…
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I don’t pay much attention to what goes on around me at work – I have enough to do trying to maintain focus and stay on task without getting into dishing the dirt much about colleagues. But sometimes, a topic just begs to be explored. Yesterday, a co-worker who’s now a kind of tech services/general upgrades and hardware dogsbody was walking around behind me saying “Porkchops, porkchops,” in a sing-songy, “where are you” tone of voice. I responded with “applesauce,” because that’s what immediately leaps to my tiny little mind on instinct. She came to my desk and related the…
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We’ve been home for a week, and our two-week vacation has become a memory. All this week, we’ve been getting up, going to work, coming home, catching up with shows on TiVo, catching up with reading, catching up with Riley. For me, work wasn’t so much catching up as deleting a bunch of unwanted emails and shaking my head over the way a few of my clients seem to think that it’s no big deal to arrange a lot of hotel rooms with only 2 or 3 days’ notice. Unfortunately, my backup had to deal with this as it happened…
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Certain of my clients tell me that Northwest is the airline most likely to have delays or cancellations. Guess they’re running short of goats. If you like yours, leave it at home. KATHMANDU Reuters – Officials at Nepals state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.
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Storms rip across Chicago area — chicagotribune.com There’s damage everywhere, and there’s still no letup in the rain.Hours after a fast-moving storm packing winds over 70 m.p.h. turned skies from day to night across the Chicago area Thursday — damaging buildings, splitting trees, causing flooding, and bringing planes and trains to a halt — the rain continued to fall. A severe thunderstorm watch was in effect for Cook County until midnight, and a flash flood watch was in effect for the area through late Friday night. Occasional showers and thunderstorms will continue tonight, with heavy rainfall and damaging winds possible.…
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Old rule still holds magic for stranded air travelers — chicagotribune.com It served as a secret handshake, of sorts, between airlines and passengers for decades.Travelers whose flights were delayed, or who simply were running late, would sidle up to ticket counters and whisper, “Rule 240 me.” And the airline workers usually would oblige, putting them on the next flight to their destination, even if it were on a rival carrier. The days of Rule 240 as an official component of the era of regulated air travel are long gone. But in this summer of endless delays, steamed passengers and overcrowded…
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I had a flashback yesterday on the phones. I was working with a client the day before who needed hotels booked from one end of Utah to the other, because she’d just been transferred to the West and had a long, long, long, skinny district to check out. We were chatting along and kidding around a little while I made with the flying fingers – I’m faster booking things “old skool” although the graphical tool we have is useful for “set it and forget it” bookings. So this woman was laughing about something I’d said to crack her up, and…
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Tornado sirens activated as funnels sweep NW suburbs — chicagotribune.com The muggiest air of 2007, which first reached the area Sunday, exploded Wednesday for a fifth consecutive day into downpour and funnel-cloud producing t-storms. Doppler radar velocity measurements identified tornadic rotation around 2:45 p.m. Wednesday afternoon in northern Kane County. A flurry of funnel reports ensued from Maple Park to Schaumburg, prompting the activation of tornado sirens. It’s been awfully, awfully wet, humid, hot, and stormy for days, and yesterday was highlighted with a little trip to the basement for us at work. I started hearing people talking about the…
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It’s been a hellish few months at work. Every now and then, jobs there get switched around, and my job is no exception. For the last few months, I’ve been getting away from work – in the sense of escaping – at least an hour after “quitting time.” Most nights, it’s been even later. Part of the problem was starting out the day “in the hole,’ spending at least an hour going through the overnight queues, fixing records that the “emergency travel services” agents had worked during the off hours. Mondays, there were sometimes 20 or 30 records to go…