Shiny Happy Fits of Rage …

“We both have shiny happy fits of rage …” well sung in Anyone Else But You by the Mouldy Peaches and experienced by me at London Heathrow Airport this past Wednesday night. After being in my fifth county in five days, packing/unpacking, ironing, meetings, taxis, meetings, sleepless nights and keeping up with emails, my nerves were a bit frayed by the time I got to London and trying to make my connecting flight to New York which would get in by midnight and be ready for meetings in the morning. I got off the plane and ended up in the passport line, which was massively endless and filled with desperate immigrants that had gotten off flights from Asia and Africa. With the line not moving, I tried to have patience, but … this tall chinese lady behind me had different ideas of Personal Space. After bumping into me at least 6 times, (I was counting!), I finally turned to her and asking if she spoke english, she said “yes, what’s the problem?”. I told her she was in my space and we would not get to the front any quicker if she kept on my back and hitting me with her purse and papers. She was most unapologetic and I’m sure chalked it up to the ugly American. After finally getting to the front and the customs people – One Hour Later – the passport lady said I did not need to be in this place and I had to go back and find my way to American Airlines desk! ARRRGGGGGHH The happy ending was after checking in with AA, and going to my flight, the nice lady at the desk, after checking, told me she had changed my seat from 24c to 10b which meant I had been upgraded to Business Class – for No Reason (ok, maybe it’s the 1 million miles line on my AA gold card. Things looked good again, but ….

After getting into JFK airport and getting through desperate taxi line, I made it to my hotel in Midtown Manhattan, which had been prepaid on Hotels.com. Where… the not nice lady at the desk told me, now its 1am, that my room had been given away and that they were sold out for the night! How could this be, I asked? After going through several levels of grief (denial, bargaining, anger, depression), I reached acceptance and they moved me to a hotel 30 minutes away in lower Manhattan next to WTC construction site, which added 30 minutes to my commute next morning where 0800 meeting was set back in midtown. But she did give me taxi fare, but I got no cookie. ARRRGGGGG

“we both have shiny happy fits of rage!”