Choice

I was exhausted from a long stressful week with a tough customer, although exciting but I had enough for that week, waiting for a flight to get back to my two months old baby girl. I had always tried to get to the gate in the last five minutes. Right back then, I have been waiting in the lounge for more than an hour already. How eager was I to get on that plane, you get the idea.

Then the voice came on, "I am sorry to announce that the flight from xxx to xxx is delayed, DUE TO weather condition..." Crap, that's my flight No., I guess that's the thought flying through many brains. That's what I was thinking anyway, AND weather was marvelous!

Anyhow, this is the third announcement in a row, another two hours delay. Lounge started to get noisy and less peaceful. (This is what I learnt before - when you can't think of a good excuse to cover the bad situation, telling the truth is the better choice, and the easier one.)

Now the idea that five hours of my life would be spent in this airport, I became a little nervous. After the interruption from the charming machine voice, I had to put my book away. What could be worthy enough for five hours of my time here in this place?

While I was thinking and searching, the service desk got more and more crowded. Impatient faces plus angry voice make quite a scene. Well, I could be a nosy geek sometimes so I started to watch. Apparently most of the airline folks had lost their nerves, they were being questioned, by many people, being requested with some quite wild compensation ;), being even nudged in not quite a friendly way. Well, it's Friday, and we are all in a hurry.

Just before I lost my interests and wondering whether my eyes should be cast somewhere else to capture a moment at least pay back some of my time, there was this small but firm and calm voice slip out of the crowd. Following that, I saw a girl, in her twenties and blue white airline suite, starting to pick up the panics and iron them one by one. She accepted the responsibility, (I should say that from the wearing, she was not the gal who was in charge.) made arrangements to
those reasonable requests while declined/dodged some 'interesting' ones. The one I liked the most is that she didn't make up excuses, nor did she make false promises to try to shift the shit. Of course when things went wrong people would shout, "get the manager, we want to see the man in charge, we want to 'do something interesting to him' :)". The girl reached her manager, who didn't really match my expectation, as his reply over the microphone was "there is nothing I can do, the choice is yours."

Now there looked like going to be a riot, and I mean it. A lady pointed at the calm girl, "you people are all liars. How can you take responsibility when your boss doesn't want to, even he doesn't care about his company.". The girl replied, "I do, I care about my name on the tag on my suite. Please write my name down and you can always come back to me if these arrangement went wrong. I care about my name so I won't let it happen." I was quite impressed, I have to say. This was not some kinda movie lines that she doesn't need to worry about nothing what she might have to face in the next scene as it's just all fantasy. I walked/squeezed to reach her and tapped in the shoulder. When she turned around in a hurry, I said, "thank you, you made my
misery a memorable experience."

What went on there is irrelevant to this post now. I had what I was looking for. There is a choice and you are the person who can decide to pick or to ignore. She made her choice, by standing on her feet, by not avoiding. I am not sure whether she truly believe that to be calm is the right thing to do or she just remembered her professional training. But to me, she did a wonderful job, and she certainly made her point - she cares about her name on the tag.

When we finally got on the plane, I had my hours paid.