Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Traveling Is A Bitch

Over the weekend my luggage was lost for the second time. The first time was returning from Budapest ... I eventually got my bag back but it was beat up and shit was missing. The second time wasn’t even an international flight, and neither the airport nor the flight was busy, yet my ordinary, non-threatening, non-ticking Samsonite still managed to be unaccounted for. The Southwest baggage lady said that it was “probably” pulled for a random screening and then they just didn’t get it on my flight in time. But I still had to sign my stuff away since they hold no responsibility whatsoever.

Seriously, are we safer because of this? I mean, I don’t know about you, but the multitude of inconveniences since the goddamn threat level first skyrocketed, has only furthered any violent tendencies I may have had.

Sometimes it seems that somebody, the powers that be, literally sat down and made a list of every possible inconvenience for the common traveler and made those the official rules.

1) Make everyone get undressed
2) Randomly take people’s luggage to “screen” them but don’t tell them what happened to their luggage so they think it’s lost and don’t give them any guarantee that they will see it again
3) Say that real ids are not real IDs because that would be funny
4) Make everyone pay more for their airfare and call it “September 11 security fee” to milk that disaster for what its worth
5) Make people figure out how they’re gonna fit a week’s worth of toiletries in a 1-quart size zip lock bag

In fact, TSA head Kip Hawley, said in an interview last year that “Screening ideas are indeed thought up by the Office for Annoying Air Travelers and vetted through the Directorate for Confusion and Complexity, and then we review them to insure that there are sufficient unintended irritating consequences so that the blogosphere is constantly fueled.”

Case in point.

No comments: