Paper cuts and pet peeves

Oooh yesterday sucked. There's no other way to put it. I should've been prepared for it when my supervisor for the day was moaning about how there was no staff for the Friday afternoon rush. I haven't worked a Friday arvo in so long, I guess I didn't really take notice.

Oh my. I wish I had.

I was on stupid, boring, monotonous bag drop all day, which leaves you feeling like little more than a robot about an hour or two in. The passengers have done the hard bit, checking themselves in, we just have to send the bags away. So you kind of end up doing the same thing over and over - take boarding pass, enter bag weight, tag bag, release bag.

Occasionally I'll ask security questions but these seem to be slipping my mind a bit lately. Oops. I'm sure it will be reinforced at the end of the month when no one will be allowed liquids on any flights outside New Zealand unless they're in a clear resealable plastic bag. Arghh.

Anyways my shift started badly when I went to actually check a couple in (who had been dimwitted enough not to read the screens and were supposed to be in the other queue, but this isn't uncommon) and saw the flight was oversold. Refer last post. Gulping in anticipation, I finished the check in and lo and behold, they were put on standby. I went to see my supervisor, who also groaned at the prospect of telling these people they weren't gonna get to where they wanted to go straight away. I believe they were going to Napier. In the end we had to re-route them via Auckland, which would usually be easy enough.

Except that two flights to Auckland got cancelled. Queue major chaos and angry frequent flyers just wanting to get home for the weekend.

It's bad enough when any flight gets cancelled, but AKL is our busiest route, particularly on a Friday. Oh and then another flight, this time to Tauranga, was oversold and another couple had to be re-routed via Rotorua and then bussed to TRG. Bloody hell.

It was a trying day for all concerned. We were majorly short staffed, which is becoming all too frequent an occurence, and the queues were winding out the door most of the day. Just crazy.

Personally, I was ready to break. I managed to wind up with three different paper cuts from tagging bags, which I haven't done since I first started, including one that was so bad I was bleeding for at least 20 minutes. But did I have an opportunity to go get a band-aid? Oh no, not with eager passengers coming up to my counter before I called them over and was actually ready to serve them.

This has to be my biggest peeve of all. There are signs all through the queues saying "Please wait until called by check-in agent." Does anyone actually do this? HELL NO. They see the previous person walking away and rush up to the counter, even though I may have to still put extra tags on the bag, enter data into the computer or, as yesterday's example shows, attend to a medical emergency (lol!!). There are even big-shot passengers who think it's okay to not only stand right behind the person I'm serving, but to push in altogether. This happens a lot when it's busy because people, understandably, panic that they're going to miss their flight due to waiting in the queue.

Some stupid woman had the nerve to almost enter into my counter yesterday (ahem, security...) while I was dealing with someone else and their six bags, to demand that she be served because her flight was leaving in 30 minutes. I calmly explained that everyone else has to wait and that the flight doesn't close for 15 minutes so if she just lines up she will be served. We frequently check the queues for flights leaving soon but 30 minutes doesn't warrant "soon." She was not impressed but by then I couldn't give a rats. I hate it when people interrupt me in the middle of something and in the end it's only going to make the queue longer for everyone. So just back off.

Other peeves also resurrected yesterday. There are signs on the counter explaining how to go through a "safe" check-in. Safe, ha, tell that to my back that I can hardly move right now. Basically it asks to please place the bags with the handle upright and to remove all old tags. Most people ignore this. The bags get put on the belt completely flat - how the hell is this going to work?! - and it would seem most think it's our job to remove the old WLG tags so that the bag doesn't wind up back where it started. Actually it's not, and if an old tag is on a bag that goes missing it's the passenger's liability. Not that they'll listen or agree but it's true.

SO REMOVE YOUR OLD TAGS.

Oh and one more thing I can't stand is when people write out their luggage labels and take goddamn FOREVER doing it. I always say "All we need is a name and contact number" but oh no, we have to put our street address, suburb, postcode, city, country, email address and cellphone number before we can tie it to our bag. Like we're going to traipse to your house if your bag shows up somewhere it's not supposed to - we're going to ring you first.

I think I'm done for now. I'm only working 3 hours today so I really shouldn't have any right to complain at all. Bets in that I'll get asked to stay on, just as I was yesterday...not that I'll say yes. The Crusaders are playing tonight. LOL!