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A Journey With You

Tag Archives: traveling

When Companies Get It Right

05 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in mental illness, schizophrenia, travel, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

airlines, bipolar, customer service, depression, mental health, mental illness, mentally ill, schizophrenia, travel, traveling, trip, trips, writing

If you have been on a plane lately, then you know that flying has become an almost miserable experience. No one wants to pay for their baggage, so they try to carry on as much as possible. Everyone tries to get on the plane as quickly as possible to make sure their carry-on bag has space in the overhead compartment. Seats are smaller. The seats toward the front of the plane (behind first class) are now considered an upgrade on most flights and cost extra money. People are rushed. People are uncomfortable. You no longer get a meal on a flight (unless you pay for it, and even then, they are usually out of most of the choices by the time they get to the seats near the back).

Airlines tend to be the one industry that doesn’t care at all about customer service. Rather than getting better over the years, they have been getting increasingly worse.

That is why my story of my trip to Seattle on Alaska airlines stands out.

When my husband and I went to check in on the Internet the day before our flight, there were no seats left together. My anxiety started to go up. When I fly, it helps me to be in an aisle seat because I drink a lot of water on the flight and have to get up frequently to use the bathroom. My husband, always the good sport, takes the middle seat even though it is the least desirable, so that we can be together on the flight and he can help me if I am overcome by anxiety.

We went to the airport at 6 in the morning (two hours early) to see if we could change seats and also to make sure that we weren’t rushed or hurried. When we arrived at the airport we asked a woman by the Alaska ticket counter if we could change our seats. She told us it was better to change them with the person working at the gate.

We headed for the security line. We took out all of our liquids. We took off our shoes. We put our laptop in a bin by itself. We emptied our pockets. We have traveled enough since 9/11 to know the rules about security. We made it through the x-rays (I got patted down) without incident.

We found a departure board and located our gate. We started walking down the long corridors with the people movers. We had plenty of time, so we walked on the carpet in the center instead of on the moving sidewalk. At our gate, we found two seats, and made ourselves comfortable. There were no employees at the gate yet. My husband went to get coffee and my water for the flight, and when he returned I went to find the restroom.

At the gate next to ours, there were Alaska employees, and even though it is so unlike my husband to do anything outside the rules or norm, he went to the neighboring gate and asked the woman working if she could seat us together. She changed our seats (moving us up a few rows, but we still weren’t together). She told us to wait until the crew members for our gate showed up.

As soon as the employees working our flight showed up, my husband jumped up and went to ask if they could seat us together. He told the woman at the gate, “My wife has a mental illness and can’t fly alone.”

The woman my husband talked to said she would work on it, but she wouldn’t have an answer for us until almost the time that we needed to board. The flight was a full flight. There was only one seat open on the plane. She must have had to ask other passengers if they were willing to move to try and accommodate my husband and me. I am not sure, but close to the time we were boarding, she called my husband up to the gate and gave him boarding passes for two seats that were next to each other – an aisle seat and a middle seat.

This may not seem like a big deal, but in a travel environment where no one seems to care about the comfort of the passenger, this was extraordinary. The Alaska employees worked hard to make sure that we would be as comfortable as possible and they did it willingly, kindly and with smiles.

We booked another flight to Seattle last night, and without a bit of thought or hesitation, we booked it on Alaska.

 

Language: Building Walls Or Building Bridges

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by A Journey With You in travel, writing

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

architects, architecture, blog, food, language, philosophy, speach, travel, traveling, travels, writers, writing

My husband and I were driving back from Flagstaff Arizona yesterday where I attended a four day writing conference. In Yuma we stopped at a Love’s gas station. A young man with a yellow shirt, braces, glasses, and a big smile held the door open for us. Both my husband and I thanked him, and asked him how he was doing. “Great! It is a nice day today.”

My husband and I headed off to the restroom, and then met up at the coffee station. They didn’t have any liquid creamer that wasn’t flavored so I chose Almond Joy for my coffee. I don’t normally like flavored coffee, but we were on the road and being on the road requires many things outside of my norm or routine.

When we went to the cash register to pay, the young man that held the door for us started to ring us up. “Are you having a nice day? He asked.

“We have been driving all day.” I said.

“Where did you come from?” He asked.

“We came from Sedona and Flagstaff.” I said.

“I want to go to Sedona. That is on my list.”

“It is so beautiful with the red rocks all jetting up to the sky. There is a church there, called Church of the Holy Cross that you have to visit if you go.” I said.

“Is the church in the rocks?” He asked.

“Yes, it is. You can see the whole canyon from the altar. Behind the altar is one big window looking out. The architect was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright’s.” I said.

“I can’t wait to go.” He said.

We said our good-byes and as we were walking to the car my husband said, “He may not know who Frank Lloyd Wright is. Not everyone knows or cares about the history of architecture.” My husband said.

I immediately regretted the reference to Wright. While trying to build a connection with that young man I had severed the tie by parading my knowledge of architecture. If he didn’t know who Wright was I had built a wall instead of a bridge. I had put myself above him. I had shown my education and experience. In essence I had waved a card of privilege – a privilege to care about art and architecture, traveling, etc. Sedona is only a few hours from where he works and he has never been there.

I should have known better. The same thing happens to me when I am reading many writers, and they will make a reference to a Greek God, a philosopher, or a long dead writer and I will be lost by the reference. The writer will have put distance between themselves and me – they will have upped me in education and their knowledge of culture or history. I know with Google I can easily look any reference up, but the negative feeling it generates, the space it creates between me and the piece of writing, I often don’t care to look it up. I often give up on the piece and say, “This is over my head. This is too academic. This wasn’t written for me.”

I know how it feels to have someone else’s privilege (college, graduate school, possibly a PhD), or even world travels – references to places, or food, or art, or architecture – all of these things made reference to without an explanation making it seem like, “Of course, everyone knows this!”

I don’t want to push people away I want to find ways to bring them closer. I want to hear their stories and to possibly tell mine. I want to hear their hopes and dreams or be a witness to their heartbreak and pain. I want to speak simply, not because people can’t understand, but because many people haven’t had the opportunities that some of us have been lucky enough to have. That doesn’t make a person dumb, or uneducated. It may mean they have had to focus on a going to work from a very young age, or taking care of a sick parent, or maybe they know all the words to every Star Wars movie.

Who is to say what knowledge is anyway?

If we really want to reach people we have to think about our audience. Maybe some of the writers I read aren’t writing for me, maybe they are writing for people just like them, but that isn’t true of me. I want to be accessible to everyone. It’s more important to me to build a connection than to show you where I’ve been, what I have studied, the culture and history that I know.

Let’s get down to the real stuff that makes up life – let’s build a bond so I can find out what makes you cry or what makes your heart beat faster. That’s where living is, not in a reference to a dead architect.

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