confidentialmisanthropy

Dear Matthew,

We hope you enjoyed your trip to Chicago, and would love to hear your feedback. We strive to continually improve our products and your input will help us to provide you with the best possible travel experience.

Let us know how everything went...

Dear Travelocity,

Funny you should ask.

Everything went splendidly, that is, 'til my leave expired and I attempted to fly back to Japan. You see, American Airlines decided that I didn't need one of my bags anymore. I checked two bags in Chicago, one being my seabag, the other had important shit in it, most importantly, documents I needed to get back into Japan.

Strangely enough my seabag, checked at the sametime as my other bag, made the trip to Seattle with me while my other bag didn't. I waited at baggage claim in disbelief for literally 45 minutes before it dawned on me that I was royally fucked. I didn't have the time or the patience to stand in the "We lost your baggage asshole, so stand in this line and waste another fucking hour of your time so we can tell you how" line. There was a guy clearing the remaining baggage from the flight that had yet to be claimed off the carousel. I told him about what happened, explaining that I was in the military and it was imperative that my case be expedited somehow 'cause I still had a flight to catch to Japan in about an hour. He began to patronize me, telling me it'd probably been checked all the way through. I then informed him that it was fucking impossible considering my next flight was with a different airline. A competent one. He told me that my language wasn't helping. This pretty much set me off. I got a bit more audibly angry at this point.

"Are you serious? You guys lost half my luggage and you're on the verge of making me miss my flight. What the fuck does my language have to do with this? I'm talking to you in plain fucking English."

To be fair, it wasn't his fault, but seriously. I got out of the line at that point, telling them they'd officially lost any chance of me flying through them ever again... among other things. I gave my baggage claim tickets to Mo and bolted for the United gate. I had about 5 minutes 'til I had to be checked in and about 30 minutes of line in front of me. Some guy turned and saw me with my seabag (guessing he may have been prior military or something) and asked if I was in a hurry. I said if I didn't get through the line in five minutes there'd be nothing to hurry about. He told me I could cut 'im, but I said I couldn't do that but some lady at the front of the winding line pretty much ordered me to come to the front of the line and no one objected. So I did.

When I got to the person to check-in she asked for some travel documents (passport, leave papers) then it dawned on me. Needless to say, I didn't make it back to Japan that day.

It gets better. I went to the pay-phone and called Mo, told him what was up. He said the fucktards at American Airlines said my second bag was scanned after our flight left Chicago.

Geniuses.

Despite alerting my chain of command of my situation, upon return to my command I was informed I'd been marked UA (unauthorized absence) for 3 days. It's since blown over, but let American Airlines know I appreciate the headache.

Other than that, everything's swell.

Thanks Travelocity.