Thursday, February 15, 2007 ::
Stuck
My day did not begin well, and I should have taken that as a sign of disaster to come (see below). After a completely uneventful morning and commute in to the office in NYC, navigating unknown subway systems yet making good time, I ran to catch the up elevator. I made it, and I didn't see any indication from my soon-to-be new bestest friends that I had been a jerk about the whole thing, so I was feeling like I had cheated fate a bit — the elevators at 50 Broadway can be kind of slow.
But no, my hubris caught up with me. About 15 seconds into the ride, the elevator jerked to a stop and all our various floor selections blinked out. We dutifully pressed the buttons again and starting moving, this time to jerk to a stop after only another 5 seconds or so. This time we hit the alarm button, and should have been suspicious when the front desk lady immediately asked, "Are you stuck in the elevator?"
(Note to buildings with elevators: If the passenger has to do something unintuitive, like hit a second, unhelpfully labeled button (Signal?) to talk into the speaker, then you should either post instructions inside the elevator or train the staff to explain the system the first time she talks to trapped riders, and not say something like (I'm not making this up) "Hello? Hello?!? Hey, does anyone speak English in there?!?!"
After several purposefully vague "Someone's on the way" calls from the front desk, we were finally rescued after 45 minutes of captivity. Fortunately, nobody freaked and nobody had to really go the bathroom, so we avoided the worst "Lord of the Flies" scenarios. A few jokes were had at the intercom lady's expense, but I was worried for a while — only one of us had cellphone signal, and that could have gotten ugly fast.
The bravest thing I did all day was get back into an elevator to go up to the office on the 28th floor before going to the bathroom. Where's my medal?
I Want Out
I can't tell you how relieved I was when the JetBlue kiosk at JFK printed out a boarding pass for me when I checked in. When I walked in the terminal was absolutely wall-to-wall bodies and luggage, which wasn't a good sign. And the night before I saw a story on the local news that some JetBlue flight had spent something like 11 hours on the tarmac before they finally canceled the flight. So color me nervous when I walked into the airport.
My fellow traveler was going to a different destination, and his kiosk politely told him that he needed to get in an extremely long line for a reason it wouldn't reveal. Maybe my flight isn't completely fucked, I thought.
I didn't see my flight on the departures board, however, so I started to get nervous again. But I got through security and to my gate without a problem, so…. Of course, I also walked by several dozen people asleep in the hallways, and one area was just like a giant slum, with empty bottles and plates scattered among the sleeping or reading passengers and their bags.
It was when I arrived at the gate that I knew something was wrong. My gate wasn't my gate anymore, it was a customer service line at least 100 feet long. The departures board still didn't have my flight, but I did notice that the morning flight to Charlotte was scheduled to leave just a few minutes before my 5:25 flight was supposed to go. That can't be good, I thought.
So a call to Mary, who confirmed that my flight had been delayed for 5 hours. After an hour in a shorter service line at the other end of the terminal, I found out the flight number of the inbound plane for my flight, and it too was delayed out of Austin. So right now I'm doing the only thing that I can do — having a drink at the bar and trying to get on JetBlue's free wireless that it advertises as an apology for the mess of their new terminal construction. Looks like that's not the only thing that's a mess.