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June 25, 2008
So Then...
I was on my way home last Friday. I didn't get two on-time flights, I got one on-time flight and one delayed flight. Many times, just the threat of cancellation makes me happy to take any flight delay happily.
Besides, I was in Atlanta. Close enough to drive should it come to that.
But it did not.
There was a flight boarding to Providence right before my flight from Atlanta boarded.
They began its boarding then halted it, and backed everyone off the plane.
Then they boarded my flight.
There was an elderly lady in the line ahead of me. She handed the gate agent her boarding pass, and he told her that Providence wasn't boarding just yet and for her to step aside and wait.
The agent was very kind about it.
Except the woman didn't speak English. She looked at the other agents, tried to hand them her boarding pass, they looked, but wouldn't take it. One agent simply said to her, "we're not boarding Providence right now."
The elderly lady looked around some more, and said, "Providence?"
The female agent then said to the woman (in a none-too-pleasant tone), "I don't speak Spanish." She almost spit the words out.
All this happened in the time it took the other agent to scan on board three people ahead of me. As he reached for my ticket was when I heard the woman speak not-so-nicely to the old lady.
So I stepped out of line, and tapped her on the shoulder, and told her, in Spanish, that the plane being boarded was going to Greenville, not Providence.
She smiled, finally, and walked away. I walked back to the agent.
He took my boarding pass, scanned it, and when he handed it back, he also handed me a free drink coupon. And said thanks to me for helping her.
Providence, don't you know.
So to my dear sister, that is how I do it every week. There are billions of those little episodes. Opportunities for me to be a decent human being.
(The mean folks I encounter when I travel, well I usually just trip them.)
Posted by Angela Tanner at June 25, 2008 07:31 PM