Airports Suck!

Yeah, you know it. Anyone who has ever taken an operations management class, will tell you that the worst run places on the planet are airports. Just absolutely horrendous.

I dropped my parents of for an AirTran flight on Saturday. Thinking it's the weekend and they have e-tickets, I figured it should take no time at all to get them to security. But I forgot that people are idiots. Sorry.

It took about 2 minutes to check in at the kiosk (and pay $15 for a checked bag - what a racket that is) and then about 45 minutes to wait to drop off said checked bag. And why is that? Because of the humans. The humans at the drop off counter who, for some unknown reason, take for fucking ever to print out a sticker and put it on the bag. And the humans in line who are dropping off the bags.

Let's start with the idiots dropping off their bags. You're standing in the kiosk/internet bag line, right dip-shit? Then you should have checked in at the kiosk or the on the internet! Why does every single person who walks off to drop his bag have an issue? Hey AirTran, maybe you should designate half your counter space for "I have Issues" sort of passengers?

These fucking idiots are clueless! This guy has not ticket. That girl packed 120 pounds worth of mascara and eye-liner in her bright pink suitcase and is refusing to pay the overweight charge (which would apply to her ass as well). Some dude showed up with a piece of luggage so big they had to find a measuring tape to see if it would even fit on the plane. And so on and so on...

The folks at the counter should have one job and one job only. Step one, check that ID matches printed boarding pass. If it doesn't or there's no boarding pass, they should just punch the passenger in the neck and send him away. Step two, print the bag tag and stick it on. Done! Seriously, a fucking robot should be able to do this job. But of course, robots are not at the right level of face recognition. But they sure could taze the fuckers who have issues. That would be awesome!

So yeah, we waited 45 minutes and then it took us 1 more minute to send off the bag. Then it was the stupid line at security... But that's another story, because those people have made a science out of messing up anything resembling queue management. Stand in one long line, then a person tells you which other line to go to, then go back into a single only to be split up into separate lines by another person. Wow, that's so bad...

Kaja's advice - never pack more than a carry-on. If you need anything else, just buy it at your destination. I have a friend who used to fly with nothing. He would then buy everything he needed to wear and return it to the store for a refund at the end of his visit. Brilliant!