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Jul. 31st, 2017 01:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsySo a few months ago when I went to Japan, the trickiest connection was the first one, as it was for a bit under an hour. An hour sounds like a lot for a connection, but it's really not. It was all up to the fates as to whether the short flight going into Dulles would arrive on time. Fortunately it did, because when I landed, I had to power-walk to the next gate, and they were already boarding for the main flight as soon as I got there. Tl;dr I lucked out and the flights to and from Japan went smoothly.
And then there was my company trip to Chicago last week.
It was supposed to be a 2-hour flight. Sounds easy enough. Add in the hour for me to get to the airport, another couple hours in the airport, and another hour to wait for my luggage and get to the hotel, and that's about 6 hours. Except the airplane was late coming in, and there was a mass of thunderstorms in Chicago, so there were all kinds of delays there. Oh, and did you know that they don't unload baggage from airplanes when there's lightning? So that took a while. Instead of 6 hours, it turned into 9 hours. Another 3 and I would have been better off driving time-wise. My coworkers who went on this trip all took different flights there, and all of them had insane delays.
The trip home wasn't much better. There was a ground-stop order in BWI due to the same storm system that went through Chicago earlier, so even though the airplane and crew were ready, we couldn't take off. After we finally did take off, the landing was wet, as the area had received about 5" of rain. Then I had to face an exceptionally rainy drive home, complete with other drivers saying "I can't drive in this shit" and pulling off to the side of the road. I don't blame them, it was bad.
But if that's the karma penalty I have to pay for my Japan trip being smooth, I'll gladly take it.
Because on company trips, I also get paid for travel time, including delays. And all of that travel time was on the weekends.
And then there was my company trip to Chicago last week.
It was supposed to be a 2-hour flight. Sounds easy enough. Add in the hour for me to get to the airport, another couple hours in the airport, and another hour to wait for my luggage and get to the hotel, and that's about 6 hours. Except the airplane was late coming in, and there was a mass of thunderstorms in Chicago, so there were all kinds of delays there. Oh, and did you know that they don't unload baggage from airplanes when there's lightning? So that took a while. Instead of 6 hours, it turned into 9 hours. Another 3 and I would have been better off driving time-wise. My coworkers who went on this trip all took different flights there, and all of them had insane delays.
The trip home wasn't much better. There was a ground-stop order in BWI due to the same storm system that went through Chicago earlier, so even though the airplane and crew were ready, we couldn't take off. After we finally did take off, the landing was wet, as the area had received about 5" of rain. Then I had to face an exceptionally rainy drive home, complete with other drivers saying "I can't drive in this shit" and pulling off to the side of the road. I don't blame them, it was bad.
But if that's the karma penalty I have to pay for my Japan trip being smooth, I'll gladly take it.
Because on company trips, I also get paid for travel time, including delays. And all of that travel time was on the weekends.
no subject
Date: 2017-08-14 01:16 am (UTC)