{"id":51963,"date":"2013-02-04T21:58:07","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T04:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wend.ca\/?p=51963"},"modified":"2020-04-11T19:23:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-11T23:23:23","slug":"not-the-first-commute-to-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wend.ca\/?p=51963","title":{"rendered":"Airports and UnAwesome-ness"},"content":{"rendered":"

This commute included seeing people at the airport that I haven’t worked within a couple of years, a cabbie that pissed me off so much that I purchased a monthly US phone plan so I could use Uber, and lots and lots of UAL patience.<\/p>\n

I’d become spoiled travelling to SF on Sunday nights. End to end the entire get-to-the-gate process (taxi, check-in, customs, security, coffee) takes a measly 30-ish minutes. <\/p>\n

My first Monday morning commute was an eye-opener and when I arrived at the airport it was Packed (with a capital P). When I asked the nice lady at the United counter if Mondays were always busy, she replied, “It’s like this every morning.” <\/p>\n

Customs stopped letting people through because there was simply no space. And, the security line spanned the distance between the machines and customs (easily an hour-long wait). I’m pretty thankful for Nexus… I only had to wait for 10-minutes for both lines. <\/p>\n

But then I had to deal with United (UA\/UAL)… a.k.a. Usually Always Late. <\/p>\n

Flight delays to SF are pretty common… it’s because of the fog. This is why I try to fly on Sundays… because if the flight is delayed (Usually Always) my work week is not impacted. Though I must admit it was nice to see the sunrise over Calgary.<\/p>\n

It was rather apropos that I spent the eventual flight reading (and laughing) over Scott Stratten’s The Book of Business UnAwesome<\/em>. I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with poor customer service and steering clients away from the experiences he writes about. So, I’ll leave with a quote: <\/p>\n

Every time you use a QR code for something and don’t think it through, a kitten dies.<\/em><\/p>\n