I'm drinking a Pete's Summer Ale which Pete himself brought me. Nice guy, Pete. Good beer, too. Pity he sold the company. He gave our agency a couple of cases of beer yesterday as a final parting gift. My boss had him autograph one of her bottles, but I'm not into beer collecting like this guy.
I don't usually like the taste of alcohol. Right now, my job's driving me to drink. It's been one of those weeks where everyone decides I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong with their life and gives me hell about it. I bitterly resent this. It keeps me awake at night, which deepens my resentment. I do my best, and my best is considerable. They pay me the big money because I'm worth it. I wasn't born yesterday, and I know all the legitimate tricks of the trade. I pull off miracles every day so I'm singularly unimpressed when someone tries to browbeat me for being a "bad" travel agent. I laugh at the very idea. But here, let me share. This is how my week has gone.
Dickweed #1: A client has been weakly threatening my company with a lawsuit because I did not tell him the ticket he bought had a 30 day maximum stay. I told him it was a highly restrictive ticket with a penalty for changes; that's the basic riff, and unless we have a reason to check further, that's all we ever say. He was told at the outset he would have to pay a lot more money to buy the ticket with a year's stay but he thought he could beat the system by buying the cheaper ticket and changing it for a small fee. The database is smarter than he is so it refused to allow the change in the computer when we sat down to actually do it. Because I had told him he could make changes to the return date (which is true as long as it's within the 30 days), and then had to tell him the exact change he wanted was not allowed, he is now claiming I should pay the fare difference between his original ticket and a one way ticket home, about $900. I apologized for not finding the hidden fare rule when he asked a general question (my psychic abilities failed me). I tried to get Air Canada to waive the restriction for him since the maximum stay was not something that showed up in either in the stored fare, on the ticket itself, or anywhere in the rule display. They wouldn't help (frightfully un-Canadian of them). That's not what he wanted to hear. That's all he's getting, though. He knows he's in the wrong, but he's not going to accept that he lost his gamble. He calls me every day to berate me and threaten the pathetically illusory lawsuit. He's hoping we'll get tired of him and pay him off. He is deluded in this respect as in all others. He is a flea-bitten, malodorous, inbred piece of buffalo dung and I hope he loses all his hair overnight.
Dickweed #2: A revolting man with a thick Russian accent asked me if I liked to work hard to get the lowest price. When I said that my job was to get the lowest price for my clients, sidestepping the issue of whether or not I liked to work hard at it, he started yelling at me for being a liar and a diplomat. Uh, whatever. I hung up. He called back four hours later to ask if we charged fees for booking hotels. Sighing unobtrusively, I said we did. He wanted to know if he had to pay the fee if he stayed at his hotel and didn't like it. Yes, I said, he paid up front, relying on my expertise to get him a hotel he would like. He started yelling at me for being a con artist. I hung up. I mean, hey, I'm only in it for the glamour, you know?
Dickweed #3: A fare shopper went ballistic when I informed her we charge fees. She wasn't going to buy anything, of course, but I thought I'd tell her anyway. Ghastly mistake. She chewed me out for "sucking the blood from the consumer." Oh, right. Are we forcing the consumer to buy the grossly inflated airfares the airlines are selling? No. Are we the monopoly on tickets so that you can only fly if you buy from us? No again. Have the airlines consistently reduced our commissions while posting record gains and seeing record numbers of passengers? You bet. Does any other service industry provide a service for free? I think not. No matter how politely I explained that we're not getting rich on the fees my agency charges for ticketing, they're simply a business necessity so we can stay open and continue to offer the convenience and service she relied on, she wanted to argue. I finally took my headphones off and went to lunch. When I got back she'd hung up. I wonder how long it took her to notice I wasn't there?
A week's accumulation of this sort of baloney has begun to fray my nerves a little. It's a good thing I already had a little vacationette planned. I think it's going to be amusing. I've organized a meeting with Bluejack and Ab Nomen on Sunday in Seattle which I expect to enjoy and do not expect to write up. You never know, though. I'm taking my digital camera so there may be a bit of photo-fu afterwards.
We're meeting at a brewpub, by the way. I'm getting used to drinking good beer. Cheers.
