Saturday, July 16, 2005

I got in the hotel shuttle, which is available for guests at the Marriott Courtyard Medical Center in San Antonio for short trips. I needed to get to my client’s office, about a mile away. So the driver gets me to the guard shack at the entrance to the office, about another half-mile from the visitor lobby. The security guard asks for the driver for his driver’s license.

“I don’t have it,” the shuttle driver says.

“I can’t let you on the property without a driver’s license,” the guard responds.

The shuttle driver shrugs.

He had to drop me off and the security guard had to call for a “courtesy ride” to the visitor’s lobby, which took another 10 minutes.

What kind of idiot has a job as a hotel shuttle driver and drives around without a driver’s license? The security guards were amazed. “What if he’d had an accident?” one of them wondered. Good question. It’s absurd that I have to ask, from now on, to see a driver’s license before I let a hotel shuttle driver take me anywhere. Marriott had better do a better job of screening the employees they let drive their guests.

Posted by Shel in • Hotels
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005

For two days, I presented my “Writing for the Wired World” workshop in this room. See that obstacle to the left? That’s a pillar. It’s about four feet wide and it’s smack in the middle of the room. This is actually two rooms, with the divider opened to transform it into one large room...but with this huge pillar in the middle. Since I spoke from the middle of the room, when I looked straight ahead I was looking at the pillar. Half the audience was to the right, half to the left. About half of those on my left couldn’t see most of the screen because they were looking at the pillar. Who in God’s name thought this was an adequate setup for a meeting room? And this is no ordinary hotel. This is the Washington, D.C. J.W. Marriott, the cream of upscale hotels. Take note: Don’t book your presentations in this room unless you plan to offer discounted fees for the “vision-obstructed” seats.

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Tuesday, July 12, 2005

I’m in DC for four days. Yesterday and today I taught my “Writing for the Wired World” workshop, which I’ll do again as a one-day in-house session on Thursday for an association. Not sure what I’m doing tomorrow. Originally I was speaking at a conference that was postponed until the Fall. Whatever I do on the road, though, ”For Immediate Release,” the podcast I co-host with Neville Hobson, goes on. We recorded yesterday’s show during the workshop’s lunch break. I dashed to my room, set up my travel recording rig, and Skyped Neville. We began recording, and everything was going fine until suddenly, well into the show, I got disconnected. Not just from Skype and Neville. From the Net. I glanced at my watch and noticed it was exactly 1 p.m. That was it: The 24 hours of high speed connectivity I’d paid for had timed out. It hadn’t been 24 hours; it was after 6 p.m. when I checked into the hotel. But the 24-hour period ends at exactly 1 p.m. every day.

A customer-centric service (which iBahn evidently is not) would check to see if you’re in the middle of something before logging you off. What about a guest in the middle of downloading a large, business-critical file? Listening to a live streaming announcement from his CEO? STSN and Marriott obviously don’t care. It’s 1 p.m. Want more connectivity? Pay up. Right now.

So I did, reconnecting with Neville and finishing a podcast that now needed editing; who wants to listen to a five-minute gap during which nothing was recorded because I was authorizing another charge to my room for another 24 hours of access? There has to be a better way, but it will take service providers more customer-focused than these to offer it.

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Sunday, July 10, 2005

By the time I left for Oakland International Airport this morning for my flight to D.C., I had finished almost everything I needed to, with the exception of a sample chapter of a book my agent needs to attach to a proposal she’s submitting this week to a publisher. No problem, I figured. With a nearly five-hour flight ahead of me, I told myself, I could just write it on the plane. After all, I’ve done a lot of writing on planes.

So I get to the airport, only to find that I have been assigned seat 24C. This is a United Airbus 319; 24 is the very last row. Not only is it already a tight squeeze, but these seats don’t recline; they’re crammed right up against the bulkhead. Of course, the seat in front of my reclines just fine, and the guy sitting in it had no problem dropping his seat into my lap for the duration of the flight. I couldn’t even get the tray table down; working on the laptop was impossible.

Now, understand: This year or early next I’ll pass the 1 million mile mark with United, becoming an official 1 Million Mile passenger. I have Premier status. And this flight was booked more than a month in advance. You would think that would be enough to get me a seat in Economy Plus, reserved for members of the Premier loyalty program. But no. I was in the back, with the non-reclining seats, where the line to the bathroom never ends.

So now, after five miserable hours in the air, I’m going to start working on my chapter. Thanks United. It sure pays to be a loyal customer.

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Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Writing about previous trips made me remember this little gem from a trip to New York a year or so ago.

We picked up a cab near Central Park and asked him to take us to the Carnegie Deli. The cabbie’s reply? “Address.”

C’mon, I thought. The Carnegie Deli is one of the most famous eateries in the Big Apple. How can a cabbie not know where it was? I didn’t have the address handy, though; all I could think of was that it was on 7th. I couldn’t recall the cross-street. Hell, I don’t drive a cab in New York. So I went with the next best thing. “Just take us to Carnegie Hall.”

“Address,” he said again.

So this cabbie didn’t even know where Carnegie Hall was. You have to wonder what kind of requirements the city has for cab drivers. Breath that’ll fog a mirror and a valid driver’s license? There’s an old, old joke that goes: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer: “Practice.” Good advice for some NY cabbies.

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The security line at Dulles was moving pretty well—slow but steady—until one guy about to pass through the metal detector put up a stiff argument against taking off his shoes. As he stood there, arms flailing, spittle flying from his lips, the rest of us came to a dead halt and waited.

I remarked to Michele that I’d seen this before, more than once. At Oakland about a year ago, I saw a fellow with a European accent verbally assault one of the TSA officers for asking his wife to take her shoes off. When we finally got moving again, I told the same officer that some of us actually appreciated what they did, then asked how often they take that kind of abuse. I was shocked at the answer: Several times an hour. “People throw stuff at me,” he said. “They spit at me.”

Spit at him? Seriously?

First off, you have to wonder what color the sky is on the planet from which these people hail. You can argue the value of the security measures taken at US airports, but the inconvenience is minor and if it deters even one maniac from trying to get a weapon on board, I’m all for it. But I have to wonder if people remember what security was like before TSA took over? Surly, bored, self-important private security workers who would just as soon zap you with a cattle prod as pat you down. I have yet to meet a TSA officer who wasn’t courteous, polite, and professional. The change has been wonderful.

I do have some questions for TSA, though, and these are aimed higher up than the hard-working folks who staff the airport security checkpoints. Here we go…

1. My suitcase and briefcase, the ones I haul all over North America, always contain exactly the same things. So how come one airport sends them through the X-ray with no further check, another airport wipes it with the pad and tests it on the machine, and another opens one bag or the other up to rummage through it? Don’t your people get trained to look for the same things?
2. Why do my suspenders set off the alarm in some airports and not others? Aren’t the machines calibrated the same way?
3. Speaking of suspenders, some officers have me shrug one arm out of the suspenders as a way to minimize the odds of setting off the metal detector. At another airport, I’m told I can’t do that.
4. In one airport, I’m told to put my shoes in one bin and my laptop in another. When I duplicate that requirement in another airport, the TSA officer consolidates my shoes and laptop into one bin.
5. At some airports, you’re required to keep your boarding pass with you when you pass through the metal detector. At others, the TSA folks don’t care.

I understand that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, but I can be better prepared when approaching security if I know what to expect—and with the routine different at every airport, I never know what to expect.

Aside from this minor gripe, though, I have to stand up for the TSA. They’re doing a tough job with good humor and professionalism. Keep that in mind the next time you feel like spitting on one of them.

Posted by Shel in • Airports
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I’ve been back a few days now from the IABC International Conference in Washington, D.C., and am recovered enough to tell the tale.

Our flight out of Dulles was due to depart at 9 p.m., but a number of things indicated that wasn’t likely. Despite the “On Time” reference at our departure gate, several other flights were delayed and a couple had canceled. The lightning flashes were getting closer to the airport. And, sure enough, by 9 p.m. there was a 20-minute delay. By the time we actually flew out of Dulles, that had turned into a 5-1/2-hour delay. We were supposed to land in Oakland, CA at around 11:40 p.m. By the time we actually got home, it was daylight. The newspaper had already arrived. If I had gone to sleep in my own bed the night before, I would already have been up and working.

But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, thanks to JetBlue. What did they do that other airlines can’t figure out? Here’s a list:

• Frequent updates—The gate agents kept us notified about what was going on. Even when they didn’t have anything new to report, they got on the PA and said, “We don’t have anything new to report. Your plane, which was diverted to Pittsburgh for fuel, is still on the ground in Pittsburgh.”
• Lending comfort—When it was clear the delay was going to stretch out, the gate agents went down the jetway and retrieved pillows and blankets and began handing them out. A while later, they brought up drinks and snacks that had been destined for the flight.
• Compensation—This was a weather delay, pure and simple, and JetBlue didn’t have to do a think to make it up to anybody. Act of God, right? Instead, they gave everyone on the flight a free one-way trip.

Add to that the general good nature of the gate agents and other staff on hand, and it added up to being a lot more tolerable than delays I’ve had with other airlines (not to name names, but they begin with a “U").

Of course, not everybody is going to be happy with a delay, particularly the clueless summer travelers. At one point, just after the flight finally arrived from its unexpected stop in Pittsburgh, the gate agent had to inform us the crew that had been on the plane was too tired to fly back across the country and we’d have to wait for a fresh crew. (Not the pilots, mind you; we had fresh pilots waiting to board with the rest of us at Dulles.) Behind me, I heard a passenger say, “We don’t need a crew. We can get our own drinks. Something else must be going on.” Clueless summer travelers apparently don’t know that flight crews are primarily there for safety, not service.

Despite these few instances of dissatisfaction, most everybody was patient and relaxed. That’s due mostly to JetBlue’s approach to the situation, which is easy to sum up: Customer-focused. As the big airlines continue to struggle, you’d think they’d figure this out.

Posted by Shel in • Planes
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