This, That, and the Other

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 11th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

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This was originally posted on November 11, 2005 on my old blog. FYI, I’m retired now, so I don’t have to fly on business trips for my job anymore. I also no longer live in the Boston area. And three years after I wrote this post, Northwest Airlines was acquired by Delta Airlines.

More Honesty Than I Wanted to Hear

I had to take a business trip to Detroit this past week. For those of you who don’t frequently fly to Detroit, there is essentially only one way to get there non-stop by air from many parts of the country, including Boston, and that’s via Northwest Airlines. For what it’s worth as you consider your travel arrangements in the event that you ever have to fly from your town to Detroit, you should know that Northwest Airlines is in bankruptcy and its mechanics are on strike.

Yes, that should be enough to cause some concern for anyone who has to fly from Boston to Detroit, where Northwest has a monopoly on direct flights. However, in business, time is money, you gotta do what you gotta do, and blah, blah, blah!

So I’m on my way to Detroit, sitting in a middle seat (ugh) in row 39 (of 41 rows) in a jam-packed hollow metal tube around six miles above the surface of the earth. The departure from Boston was delayed by an hour, and it appeared that many of the passengers had connecting flights in Detroit. The guy sitting next to me, for example, had one to San Diego and he asked the flight attendant about the probability of his making his connection.

The flight attendant, bless her evil heart, was brutally honest. She told him that it was highly unlikely that he’d make his connection. Then she went on to tell him (and all other passengers within earshot), that she would never fly Northwest if she didn’t work for the airline. “The ‘real’ mechanics are on strike,” she said, “and the replacements don’t know what they’re doing. They’re all trainees and they’re slow and they make mistakes. All of our flights are running way late because the mechanics are new and inexperienced.” As if that wasn’t enough, she added, “You’ll be lucky if this flight will only be an hour late, assuming we get there at all!”

I’m sorry, but that was more honesty than I really wanted to hear.

Well, long story short, we did make it safely, albeit 90 minutes late, to Detroit. Upon reaching the gate, the flight attendant got on the PA and said something like this: “Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for our late arrival to Detroit. There are many on this flight who have tight connections, and they would appreciate it if those of you who have Detroit as your final destination would please allow those who have connecting flights to deplane ahead of you.”

Now that was laugh-out-loud funny!