Monday Manners: Holiday Travel

I am writing this week's column from El Paso, Texas, where I make an annual pilgrimage to visit my family, eat copious amounts of Mexican food, and exchange gifts.

I say "annual," in that I've done it every December since 2002. This year, however, may be my final holiday trip. From now on, I'm thinking that if my family wants to spend the holidays with me, they'd better pick some that happen in April.

Flying home for/around the holidays (I actually came down after Christmas this year) has become an enormous pain over the last few years (remember this fun situation?), compounded by the fact that weather at airports tends to be generally crappy from December to February. I try to mitigate damages by flying through Dallas or Atlanta rather than Chicago or Minneapolis, but bad December weather has delayed or canceled those flights, too.

All that time spent in an airport is enough to make a person very, very rude. Even a person who writes a manners column. (Or her boyfriend, who got dragged along for the trip.)

And so this column and its simple message serves as a reminder for myself as much as to all of you: be nice to the over-worked, over-stressed airline employees around the holidays. Chances are, they're not trying to screw you. They don't control the weather. They didn't take a wrench to the computer's mainframe system to cause mechanical troubles. They want you to get to your destination almost as much as you do—if only because that means you'll stop yelling at them. And beyond that, they really do hold the next few hours (or days) of your life in their hands, so calling the ticket agent a moron/bitch/fag/cunt/asswipe might mean you're sleeping in the airport. You can't see the agent's computer. You don't know whether all flights to your destination between now and next Monday really are booked, or whether s/he just doesn't like being called demeaning names.

These situations suck, but the more patient and courteous you are—provided the people you're dealing with really aren't trying to ruin your day—which, let's face it, they sometimes are—the better things will work out for you in the long run. So if you're out of Philly right now and you'll be flying back in over the next week, while airports are still crazy for the holidays, just remember that kindness counts. The fog over Atlanta may not clear, but you could find yourself on the first flight out when it finally does.

Image Credit: Flickr user RichieC.