Where have I been, and who the hell cares?

Things have been hectic, and I’m not even sure how I found the time to enter this. I kinda think it doesn’t pay since blogs that don’t get updated regularly seem to vanish into the vast wasteland of the outdated internet.

But I digress. Even if there is no one to read, I feel like writing. I have been busy with job related activities. It has been my policy in the past to not write too much about my jobs, and I will continue that now, especially due to the fact that I am now employed by a very large corporation. As I just said, I won’t go into that, but let’s just say that I have to wear a clip-on tie and I drive a Volkswagen Beetle.

Now comes the time during my usual entries where I go off on somebody. Today it is Continental Airlines. Since my last job involved me hopping across the country on a weekly basis, I spent quite a bit of time with these folks. Once a week I would head out to Baton Rouge Intergalactic Airport and hop the short plane over to Houston to be connected to my actual destination.

I had complaints about them in past entries, as I am sure I would have had with any other airline. However, their latest act of stupidity has vastly overshadowed anything else I had encountered. My wife has a friend who is a flight attendant for them, and she provided her with a couple of ‘buddy passes’ so that she and her sister could take a trip a few weeks back.

First let me explain a bit about the buddy pass. They aren’t exactly golden tickets. They still cost you $100 bucks, and you fly stand-by, or ‘cattle’ as I call it. The pass also lets the various employees of Continental that you will encounter on your trip know that you are below the level of the normal customer. This basically allows them to turn their own personal asshole dial up to 11 when dealing with you.

Not to drag this out longer than it needs to be, I will summarize the events of the trip by simply saying that my wife and her sister were treated like a couple of terrorists at George W. Bush picnic.

Apparently Continental Airlines has a strict dress code when flying using a buddy pass. They see you as an extension of the employee who has issued it to you, and you are disgracing the company by not wearing dressy clothing. Don’t make the mistake of approaching the ticket counter with denim on. You will be tasered, dragged away by the TSA, cavity searched, then hanged from the ceiling by your wrists and beaten with razor wire until you realize the error of your ways.

Never mind the fact that “Bob” behind the ticket counter is wearing a jacket that fell out of fashion in 1968, that the tension on the button holding his pants together is greater than that of the gravitational pull of the entire universe, and the piece of roadkill that he has delicately placed atop his head for hair would scare blind people. Or, the fact that “Becky” the gate agent looks like an electrocuted meth addict who just got ran over by a bus. YOU have to look professional. Heaven forbid that you might tarnish the image of the drunken pilots.