Patience on a Beautiful Morning

Got up at 5am this morning and headed to the airport. I got to Wash DC on Tuesday before the winter storm really hit here, and worked all day in Washington yesterday while it raged up in Boston. This morning its beautiful and clear, but the airport is still catching up.

I’ve got a seat on the 7:45am shuttle (now showing 8:15am), though the 6:45am is still at the gate, so I’m assuming there’s still going to be some hangover from yesterday when both airports were closed for most or all of the day.

As expected, there’s lots of bleary-eyed folks who were here overnight. US Air is their usual self.

Large organizations can take on personalities and moods just like individual people. Not to say that everyone in the organization acts that way, but its just an overall impression you get after engaging with a bunch of bunch of people from the same company. For better or worse I fly United the most, and their personality has been some combination of “bitter”, “mean spirited” and with a sense of entitlement, that somehow the world owes them something for being airline employees (here’s David Isenberg’s latest experience).

The impression with USAir is something like “willing but uncapable”. The people seem to want to help you, but they’re just lacking the information or systems or know how to actually get anything done. When things work smoothly things are pleasant. When anything goes wrong, well, good luck!