Travel Agents

My Little Brother and I are trying to arrange for him to come up here at the end of July.

Our Mother insists on working with a travel agent. “They can get you the best fares. Much better than the internet.”

The web scares the hell out of Our Mother. Computers scare the hell out of Our Mother. (Blog for another time.)

I’ve been surfing the web pretty extensively to get him a decent priced flight from the Desert Southwest to the Pacific Northwest. I’m happy to pay for half his ticket. He’s a starving college student and on a bit of a fixed income. Well, not so much starving because he still lives in the same town as Mom and Dad. And, he works like a dog waiting tables at one of the nicer restaurants in town, and they feed him pretty well at work. And, he makes decent money. But, still, you do that kind of thing when you make more money than him and he’s your only Little Brother. Your only sibling, in fact.

When we lived in Vegas, it was easy for folks to come, so they came.

Getting to our little town is a bit of a pain in the ass. Now, the closest major airport is about 3 hours away by car, including a ferry trip (when you grow up in the desert, taking a ferry is a novelty, so you take it). Riding in the car for 6 – 7 hours isn’t something I’m really going to want to do when I’m about 4 weeks away from delivering Baby Kaos. You hearin’ me?

He can fly here, but here’s how it would work:
Fly from the Desert Southwest to the Pacific Northwest.
Take the shuttle from Airport A to Airport B.
Fly from Airport B, which is in the same city as Airport A, to our little town.

Sounds easy enough.

But then you take into consideration that you’ve got to coordinate times of the flights at Airport A and Airport B. This could result in a major layover…like three hours or so. He’s a damn good-looking 21-year-old, about to be senior in college, so he could probably nail 2 or 3 chicks in Airport A before he catches the shuttle to Airport B. He’s a Creative Writing major, so he could actually nail like 6 chicks if he felt like it.

But, it’s a pain in the ass to coordinate the times and the flights and all that jazz. Especially when you’re trying to keep the cost under $10,000,000.

So, we each called a travel agent in our respective cities.

He called his about three weeks ago. He still hasn’t heard from her. Three weeks.

Hello? I need to put in for vacation sometime soon! Can you pick it up a bit?

So, I called her on Monday. She was out until Wednesday. I spoke with another travel agent at the same office. She was about as friendly as a rabid raccoon.

He’s also trying to book some mega-trip to Vegas and stay in a mega-resort with his girlfriend. They want to go all out, and that’s cool. Our Mother is worried they’re going to get married while they’re there. I’m not worried. The dude has a good head on his shoulders.

She hasn’t called him back on the Vegas trip either.

I called my travel agent on Monday, gave her my email address, no email from her yet.

She did call me on Tuesday, left a message, said she couldn’t get anything to go through to my email address.

So, I went on the web and tracked down her email and emailed her asking her to please email me. She replied back saying she think she figured out my email address and she sent me information on Tuesday. I replied to that and said I hadn’t received anything from her, would she mind resending me the info when she has some time?

My question is: what goddamned school did these travel agents go to? Is it the University of Stupid Bitch? Or is it the School for the Overly Incompetent?

Sweet Jesus, you guys. If I did business like this, nobody would every be educated about their health. The world would be full of smoking, overweight, drug-addicted, alcoholics, that were illeterate. Oh, wait. That's America.

In the words of Eric Cartman, "I...am...so...pissed...off...right...NOW!!!"