I Hate the Airport

I just got home from a 4, nay, 5 day business trip to a conference in the Dirty (Atlanta for those who are ignorant). For the most part, the trip was fun and educational and I had a great time boozing with a bunch of colleagues spread across the country. I had an awesome night at Hooters, of all places, downing 14 pitchers of Miller Lite with a guy from Columbus, Washington DC, Jacksonville and my buddy from Cleveland and a couple of lady-coworkers from Cleveland and Birmingham, Alabama. We saw a couple of youths driving a souped up pickup truck getting arrested because they threw some coke (probably, I'm well versed in these things) and a gun in their glove compartment when they got pulled over. It was fun.

But it was a business trip, first and foremost. It's been a long time since I've gotten THAT drunk 4 straight days with approximately 4 hours of sleep per night and I was one tired motherfucker. I just wanted to get back to my frozen tundra, see my dog and sleep in my own bed and get back into my routine.

But no. Cleveland was trounced by an ice storm.

Needless to say, my flight was cancelled and I had to stay another night in a nasty hotel in the middle of College Park, a pretty disturbing prospect considering the toughest of the bunch was my female, super-model looking coworker who hailed from Russia (which doesn't discount anything, I'd rather fight Mike Tyson than tell another "...in Russian, road forks you!" joke).

I wasn't that upset that our flight was delayed a day, but today's flight I was PISSED. I'm a laid back dude, and don't get angry that easily, but today was absolutely ridiculous.

I understand the airport was covered in ice. I understand it's something out of everyone's hands, but the level of STUPIDITY exhibited by these retards who run the airlines pushed me to an edge that I usually don't reach.

I had a test today in my class, which would've been fine if we had come in at the original time this morning, but the sequence of events that postponed my arrival were INEXCUSABLE.

Here's a checklist:

-Circling the airport for an hour because the Tower wasn't responding.
-Landing and nearly running into a guy sitting on the runway in a tractor.
-Sitting in the airplane for a half-hour waiting for them to remove a giant pile of snow from our gate (really? You couldn't put it anywhere else?)
-Sitting in the airplane for an additional hour while we waited for THOSE FUCKING ASSHOLES WITH THE ORANGE FLASHLIGHTS TO GUIDE US 100 FUCKING GOD-DAMN FEET TO THE GATE.
-Sitting by Baggage Claim because the baggage people couldn't realize that our original flight had changed so they just put all our luggage in Customs (Customs?!?!?!?! Atlanta isn't Amsterdam, there was no need for them to do that).

Needless to say, I missed my test and will have to bust ass the rest of the semester just so I can pass the LAST class I need to finish. And why? Because of gross incompetence exhibited by the people we trust to keep bombs off our airplanes and ensure that our plane will land without having to worry about tractors blocking the runway.

Fuck foreign relations and the economy, there are more important issues that need to be addressed by our nation's leaders, and that is the unionization of industry sectors such as airport workers showing such ridiculous stupidity and disorganization. The people responsible for my shit today do not deserve to work, and I'm not saying that because I'm pissed, I'm saying this because there was no excuse for it.

Airports are, supposedly, some of the most efficiently run institutions in the country. How could they not know that there was a flight arriving at our gate? Why should we have to worry about a massive pile of snow blocking our exit from a ridiculous trip that went on a day too long? Why did I miss a test because the airport couldn't find 2 dudes with some fucking orange popsicles to guide us 100 feet to our gate?

Fucking inexcusable.