Et tu, Alaska Airlines?

Okay, fine. I’m being a little melodramatic. But still. When it rains poop … um … make poop-ade? I suck at maxims, too, it seems. The point is, things are going less than optimally well in the Everywhereist-Fishkin household. Let’s recap:

• Air France is operated by primates. And not even smart primates, like the ones on T.V. that smoke and can re-enact scenes from movies. No. Dumb primates.
• Our landlord is a misleading jerk.
• Apartments in Seattle are impossible to find and the stress is causing us to go all Mr. Hyde on one other. Rand said something to me that resulted in guilt so severe, tweeps were apologizing on his behalf. And in retaliation, I cut the crotches out of his boxers (he doesn’t know about that yet – SURPRISE, babe! HAPPY SUCKDAY!)

Sigh. Yes, things were not going well. Last night, Rand told me that he was pretty sure someone had put a hex on him. He told me this over the phone. He should have told me this in person, but, alas, he could not. Because he was stuck in Phoenix. And that gets us to the title of this post.

Lately, there has been a lot of craptacular stuff going on lately, and amidst all of that, I got to thinking about how Alaska Airlines was one of the few things that had not let us down recently (I mean, besides keeping us waiting for hours in San Diego a while back).

And then before I could blink, ALASKA WENT AND LET US DOWN. Rather, it let several thousand people down. And kept them there. Apparently Alaska’s computer system (which they use for their flight plans) failed yesterday morning. So no flight plans. And then, no flights (they canceled 140 of them). Rand was in the air during this time, flying from NOLA to Phoenix, where he would catch a connection to Seattle. And because he was in the air, he ended up being last in line to get rebooked.

When he landed, and found his flight canceled, he discovered the soonest (the absolute soonest!) Alaska could get him back to the Northwest (and not even Seattle, but Portland, no less) was TUESDAY. They expected him to stay THREE GODDAMN DAYS IN PHOENIX. Nevermind that he has to be in another country by Wednesday. Fortunately, Rand was quick on the trigger, and managed to get the last seat on a Southwest Airlines flight (god bless you, Southwest. You do not suck). So he’s coming back today (after a connection in Salt Lake City).

In the meantime, Alaska has been doing a great job of apologizing, but not actually fixing anything. I could wax on and on about how an airline of their size shouldn’t have problems of this nature, but that’s obvious. Alaska messed up. Big time. And Rand was the one who had to pay for it.

I truly hope he’s not cursed, though right now I can understand how having Gold status on Alaska might seem like that. But I have to give him props: Rand has been pretty understanding about the whole thing. Still, I suspect his patience is probably wearing thin by now, and he might be in need of a good laugh.

So in that spirit, Rand, I present Alaska Airline’s apology video for the events that transpired yesterday. It is painfully awkward (especially seeing the guy on the left read the teleprompter as he speaks, and the guy on the right doing his best impersonation of the robot from Lost in Space.) Enjoy.