spoiled or pathetic?

What an experience! Was I being arrogant? Or our airline industry / airport operation just getting dumber?

I stood in line after line for what? Aggravation, stressed, people's ugliness from their heightened anxiety level, crappy self check-in kiosks created by geeks that never travel and want to piss on you just for kicks, then the corporate "process" guys lack of loyalty to customers but just looking at the financial sheets in front of their computers in windowless rooms somewhere called a "Command Centre". By the way, I was talking about my 4:30am to 6:00am experience here at YVR going thru to the U$.

From my own very "opinionated" conclusion, the lines after lines were meant to slow people down so that when you are at the U$ !mmigr@tion, you get the impression of calm and collected. The wait time there this morning was less than 3 minutes. From 4:30am, I lined up in the "Express" Q for Premier Plus line. I blanked. Wow… If I were in Asia and face that, the airline will fold. Customer service? One person working fending off customer inquiries, panic attack passengers, systems not printing boarding passes, and to call out passengers who had successfully passed the geek god test of the Kiosk user interface. I left that Q with my board pass and luggage tags by 5:10am. (I photographed all my luggage tags and my bags using my iPhone for identification purpose. And I checked my luggage tags just to be sure I had the correct ones. Experience count on this one, trust me.) The way I am writing right now, I feel I am prepare for war with a battle plan. Sad….

5:10am walked toward another line. The bag drop offs. OK, I could understand this new security scanning system. 5:20am, dropped off my bags. Then yet another line… to scan my boarding pass to match my not 3 minutes ago bag drop off information. So, was this an audit system installed by l @wyers or bE@n CounTers that never travels? Information does not change that quickly specially one did not have the bag(s) anymore. That took another 10 minutes.

O security line for carry-on now. Yuppy! My favorite of the lots. Crap. How many machines were operating here? "Sir you can just go to the front of the line." Pilots and crews.. That threw another wrench into the already taxed line up. I waited until 5:50am.

Finally after I went thru U$ front gate. I felt I had been beaten up. Hey, I was the one who now from Asia living in the most populated center of the universe on Nanjing Road. I walked down my streets many times, and didn't have the same "totally drained" type feeling.

This morning's line up after line up was totally a waste of energy. Learn from the commie$!!! From check-in to immigration to security… totally a breeze… I felt like I just used Delhi's International airport. Now, that was a very "Lo" comparison but true.

People are herb animals when it comes to lines specially those that don't travel that much. Have just that one employee properly located will ease the line tremendously. There were 3 locations this morning if simply strategically place a person directing traffic, time will be saved and passengers will be less stressed.

Do I want to fly through any gateway in North America? In short, NO. It's becoming such a hassle I am not ready to deal with. If I have to, I will allot a lot of time. My iron wife will argue differently. Always try to squeeze out that last minute.

O yeah, I was thinking of getting a SB coffee. I looked toward the shop.. another freaking LINE! Really… get some output! It's a caffeine laden shop here! I give.