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The World According to Jaggy - July 25, 2010 Misery in Munich I hate airports, and I’m beginning to hate flying too. It’s not so much the airport building or the flight, it’s all the bleedin’ time spent hanging around these modern cathedrals of cantankerousness waiting, and waiting, and then waiting some more. I often spend more time in airports than I do driving the vehicles that I’m supposed to be appraising for the publications back home. Recent experience has confirmed to me that ‘customer service’ is always the first casualty of cost cutting, and that ‘streamlining the business’ means spending less time with the customer or getting a machine to do it, like these new fangled BA automated check-in counters. This was confirmed on a recent trip to Germany, where I was offered the chance to fly direct from Edinburgh to Munich with a cheap airline, or go to Heathrow, change terminals, and fly in more comfort. It’s a while since I had used the cheaper alternative. In fact the last time was when I was stranded at Luton on my return from another foreign event and had to run for the last flight home, only to find it had been cancelled and when I asked the staff what alternative arrangements there might be, I got a shrug of their orange clad shoulders. Not their problem. I’ve hated anything with the colour orange ever since and that even includes a Terry’s Orange Chocolate and Lamborghinis ( you never know if there is anyone actually on board one of these things as their fake tans blend in like camouflage!) but I digress, back to the gripe. It’s such a while ago now since that last trip, I thought it couldn’t still be that bad, and surely the TV coverage must have made them sharpen up their act. Wrong. The flight out from Edinburgh was uneventful apart from a 40 minute delay due to a technical fault. This was after we had been checked out the lounge, through the gate, down the stairs and outside along the draughty poly tunnel in the wind and rain, and with some of the women behind me in skimpy skirts, thin jackets and entirely unsuitable shoes. After a ten minute wait in the cold we were ushered back into the terminal stairwell, then after another ten minutes ushered back up the stairs into the departure lounge and un-checked. Ten minutes later they started boarding again. You guessed it, checked through the gate one more time and out to the aircraft. Even a sheep dug would have been more caring and considerate. But it was the trip back which gave vent to this latest Jaggy view of the world’s disintegration. Give someone a dead end job with no prospects and they look for other amusement to blunt the boredom and in this case, it’s the passengers who suffer. Why is it all the nice people get desk jobs and the more bolshie ones are left to confront the public? On arrival at Munich for my return flight home I checked the Destination Board. Hall D, Gate C07. Odd I thought but presumed that gate C07 was a Nissen hut at the end of D Hall. Well, I went there and wound my way around the post office barrier queue till I got to the conveyor belt. Got the laptop out and put it in a tray, got my jacket off and put it in a tray, took my belt off and put it on top of my jacket, removed my shoes and waited. I then handed the guy my boarding pass, at which he took some offence, shouting “wrong hall, wrong hall”. I tried to protest and said the Destination board indicated this one. Well, the crazy Kraut didn’t like being questioned. He told me bluntly “you are wrong” and I should be in Hall C and pointed. I said politely the Destination Board clearly showed D, and he raised his voice like a German sergeant-major on a pock-marked parade ground still shouting at me that I was wrong and still stabbing the air with his extended digit. Now I know where the ‘traditional salute’ came from! Since time was now pressing I grabbed my jacket, laptop, belt and shoes in one hand, my bag in the other, and legged it big style with my trousers flapping round my ankles, down the terminal to Hall C where another jumped-up uniform was exercising her own brand of superiority. She was making passengers wait to come through the scanning arch till she was ready. Casually ignoring us all while the queue was building up and chatting with other staff until she could be bothered her arse doing the job she was supposed to be doing and paid to do! Across the way, Hitler’s Mother (it was her small moustache which gave the family game away!) was manning the other long line of depressed and near-suicidal travellers where a well dressed fur collared woman was getting a bit annoyed with the hanging around and inattention. She had obviously had enough, and actually went through the arch on her own initiative after failing to catch the eye of HM. Well you would have thought she was wearing platform shoes stuffed full of dynamite and an electric vest the way the prison guard apprentice took offence at the sheer effrontery of the customer going through without being officially beckoned. There followed a big and noisy shouting match on both sides, and I uncharitably thought I was glad the wumman wasn’t ahead of me in my queue. I will say however, she was giving as good as she was getting. Posh Germans obviously don’t take any more kindly to ‘little Hitlers’ than we do. Meanwhile, I could see my own flight starting to board through the glass, and I was still in my own bleedin’ queue waiting to get scanned. I wasn’t the only one. Other bedraggled and equally dis-shevilled flight inmates were now joining behind me having being misdirected by the wrongly captioned Destination Board and then re-directed by Fritz the Finger Pointer. And then on the way home, I sat there in my cramped, shoogly, lumpy orange seat for two hours refusing to buy a £3.50 coffee (coloured dish water) or 4.50 Euros, or a cardboard sandwich on instalments! Just to complete my misery, there was a kid up the back bawling its head off. I just wondered how that would have been handled back at Munich. Gag perhaps? So there I was, finally on my last lap home, and I remembered why I still hate queasyjet with such a passion. But I have to admit, our domestic operatives’ antics were still better than the staff at Munich, they must really miss manning the camps these days - and the henpecked harassed traveller gets the brunt of it. And people still think that the world of motoring journalism is glamorous and romantic, if only they knew. * * * * * |