Clown Show in New York
Jun. 12th, 2021 07:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerWhite Plains, NY - Saturday, 12 Jun 2021, 2am.
Wow, it's been a clown show for most of the past 12 hours. Oh, our seats on the flight to New York were nice. Very nice. But that was, like, the one thing that hasn't been screwed up today.
The clown show started with even trying to get to SFO airport. We were hiring a ride for the 2.5 mile trek from Hawk's office, where we'd parked our car. The Lyft app was running painfully slow. Uber wasn't much better. We finally got one of them to recognize what "SFO" is (it took them literally 30 seconds to respond) and requested a ride. The driver was apparently asleep, because he didn't move from the intersection his car was shown at for several minutes. I started calling a different ride with Uber while Hawk called the first driver to ask if he was actually coming for us. He insisted he was. But he didn't move for another 2 minutes, then he started driving the wrong direction. What should have been a 2 minute pickup time turned into 10+.
Meanwhile, on Uber, the advertised 3 minute pickup turned into 10, then back to 3, then actually took 6. As I waited I tried to update my credit card (it's been over a year since I've used either of these services!) but the app kept failing. I gave up after 5 attempts. Hours later Uber emailed me saying "Your credit card didn't work...." Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. I tried to tell you 5 time!
At SFO airport, American Airlines has relocated to the newly rebuilt terminal 1B. It's spacious, modern, and attractive compared to, well, anything, let alone the comparative shit-hole that old terminal 1B had deteriorated to. Buuuut there's a catch. The gates are basically all at the end of a ridiculously long concourse. You have to go almost 1/2 mile past food and shopping to get to where they keep the aircraft. "Great," I thought, "It's becoming like London Heathrow." (LHR is designed to extract maximum money from you while you await your flight.) And half the food and shopping isn't even open yet.
Once we landed in New York I opened my Avis app to check on our rental car. "No cars available for selection," the app alerted me. Uh-oh, would we even have a rental car? Car rentals have turned into a shit-show recently with all the agencies having reduced their fleets over the past year (due to Coronavirus cratering travel) and suddenly everyone wanting to travel again. Last-minute rates for our three day rental were $800 to $1,000+. Fortunately we booked at "only" $200 months ago. But maybe Avis gave our $200 car to someone willing to pay four times as much?
As I arrived on the tram at the rental depot I found a problem of a different color. There were plenty of cars in the lot.... Just the computer system was partially broken. Desk agents were having to call out on two-way radios to fleet attendants for every. Single. Rental. to figure out what car could be assigned. I waited about 10 minutes, making jokes with a fellow customer about "Wouldn't it be great if there were machines that could handle these numbers? And maybe send data over wires?" until I was given my assignment, a nice Ford Escape with heated seats.
Once in the car we had a drive of about 32 miles up to White Plains, NY, where we're staying for the next 3 days. There was traffic even after 11pm because of a combination of stupid people, construction, stupid people afraid to drive near construction work, slow trucks, stupid people afraid to pass slow trucks in the neighboring lane, a bit of drizzle, and stupid people terrified to drive faster than 40mph in a bit of drizzle.
We checked into our hotel at 11:30. Nothing bad happened there. Yay? At the rate things were going it seemed like they should have lost our reservation.
Next I wanted a bit of dinner. Yeah, at nearly midnight it's awfully late for dinner, but I hadn't eaten in over 6 hours. Fortunately there was a pizza delivery restaurant open until 4am. Supposedly. I called them... their phone rang and rang before rolling over to voicemail that was broken. I tried again; same thing. "Maybe order online," our friend, Peter suggested. We did. It worked perfectly. ...Ordering, that is. There was still nobody answering the phone. And no pizza ever arrived. I seriously wonder if they're going to bring me a pizza in the morning, 30 minutes after they open for the day!
Well, now it's 2am. On Pacific time that's only 11pm, so it's not as crazy-late as it seems, but still it's time to get to bed.
UPDATE: As of 10:30am Saturday no misplaced pizza has arrived!
Wow, it's been a clown show for most of the past 12 hours. Oh, our seats on the flight to New York were nice. Very nice. But that was, like, the one thing that hasn't been screwed up today.
The clown show started with even trying to get to SFO airport. We were hiring a ride for the 2.5 mile trek from Hawk's office, where we'd parked our car. The Lyft app was running painfully slow. Uber wasn't much better. We finally got one of them to recognize what "SFO" is (it took them literally 30 seconds to respond) and requested a ride. The driver was apparently asleep, because he didn't move from the intersection his car was shown at for several minutes. I started calling a different ride with Uber while Hawk called the first driver to ask if he was actually coming for us. He insisted he was. But he didn't move for another 2 minutes, then he started driving the wrong direction. What should have been a 2 minute pickup time turned into 10+.
Meanwhile, on Uber, the advertised 3 minute pickup turned into 10, then back to 3, then actually took 6. As I waited I tried to update my credit card (it's been over a year since I've used either of these services!) but the app kept failing. I gave up after 5 attempts. Hours later Uber emailed me saying "Your credit card didn't work...." Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. I tried to tell you 5 time!
At SFO airport, American Airlines has relocated to the newly rebuilt terminal 1B. It's spacious, modern, and attractive compared to, well, anything, let alone the comparative shit-hole that old terminal 1B had deteriorated to. Buuuut there's a catch. The gates are basically all at the end of a ridiculously long concourse. You have to go almost 1/2 mile past food and shopping to get to where they keep the aircraft. "Great," I thought, "It's becoming like London Heathrow." (LHR is designed to extract maximum money from you while you await your flight.) And half the food and shopping isn't even open yet.
Once we landed in New York I opened my Avis app to check on our rental car. "No cars available for selection," the app alerted me. Uh-oh, would we even have a rental car? Car rentals have turned into a shit-show recently with all the agencies having reduced their fleets over the past year (due to Coronavirus cratering travel) and suddenly everyone wanting to travel again. Last-minute rates for our three day rental were $800 to $1,000+. Fortunately we booked at "only" $200 months ago. But maybe Avis gave our $200 car to someone willing to pay four times as much?
As I arrived on the tram at the rental depot I found a problem of a different color. There were plenty of cars in the lot.... Just the computer system was partially broken. Desk agents were having to call out on two-way radios to fleet attendants for every. Single. Rental. to figure out what car could be assigned. I waited about 10 minutes, making jokes with a fellow customer about "Wouldn't it be great if there were machines that could handle these numbers? And maybe send data over wires?" until I was given my assignment, a nice Ford Escape with heated seats.
Once in the car we had a drive of about 32 miles up to White Plains, NY, where we're staying for the next 3 days. There was traffic even after 11pm because of a combination of stupid people, construction, stupid people afraid to drive near construction work, slow trucks, stupid people afraid to pass slow trucks in the neighboring lane, a bit of drizzle, and stupid people terrified to drive faster than 40mph in a bit of drizzle.
We checked into our hotel at 11:30. Nothing bad happened there. Yay? At the rate things were going it seemed like they should have lost our reservation.
Next I wanted a bit of dinner. Yeah, at nearly midnight it's awfully late for dinner, but I hadn't eaten in over 6 hours. Fortunately there was a pizza delivery restaurant open until 4am. Supposedly. I called them... their phone rang and rang before rolling over to voicemail that was broken. I tried again; same thing. "Maybe order online," our friend, Peter suggested. We did. It worked perfectly. ...Ordering, that is. There was still nobody answering the phone. And no pizza ever arrived. I seriously wonder if they're going to bring me a pizza in the morning, 30 minutes after they open for the day!
Well, now it's 2am. On Pacific time that's only 11pm, so it's not as crazy-late as it seems, but still it's time to get to bed.
UPDATE: As of 10:30am Saturday no misplaced pizza has arrived!
