Thoughts from an airport phone booth

It’s Sunday morning at exactly 8:42. I’m at the Philadelphia international airport waiting for a flight to take me to Chicago where I’m working the PGA Championships. (Incidentally, that means this blog won’t be posted for several days until I get a reliable internet drop at the TV compound, as my laptop has no wireless feature). I took the TSA warnings seriously and made sure to pack all liquids, gels and all other innocuous canisters into my checked bags and got to the airport at least three hours before my flight which is scheduled to take off at 10:35. I left my sister-in-law’s house in south Jersey at 6:30, experienced no traffic and arrived at long-term parking just after seven. In a rare showing of punctuality, the shuttle arrived less than thirty seconds after I schlepped my bags over to the little bus stop. In fact, it ended up being so prompt that I actually forgot to write down which section of the marathon parking lot I was parked in and had to ask another lady who’d gotten on with me. The bus let me off at Terminal A five minutes later where I walked right up and checked my bags in with the skycap (in addition to my usual big duffel bag, I also checked in a small pull-along suitcase just in case the rules change within the next week and I’m no longer allowed to bring my laptop on board with me for the flight home) and headed to the security gate.

The screeners, agents and miscellaneous employees who work the security gates at Philadelphia airport are notoriously curt and make very little effort at disguising how much they hate their jobs and the people they are forced to deal with on a daily basis. I braced myself for a good hour and a half of hearing the same orders barked at us over and over again about removing liquids from our bags, shoes from our feet and laptops from their cases. These orders traditionally become louder and more condescending with every ignorant, unprepared flier who arrives at the metal detector apparently unaware of the rules. But today, for some reason, the people who work here were surprisingly chipper. The lady checking my ID and boarding pass laughed and joked with me and I laughed and joked right back. Despite all the new regulations and despite the fact that this terminal only had one of their five security gates open, I was through the line and out the other side in less than a half-hour – including the extra five minutes it took for a secondary screening of my laptop and shoes.

Now let me just say this; I am usually the first person to complain and make sarcastic comments about airport security, which by and large is little more than an inconsistent designed to “make white people feel safe.” But honestly, today I was more than willing to cooperate, not even thinking twice before removing my shoes. For two reasons really. First of all, I know these TSA guys have had a rough couple of days worth of irate travelers (who apparently don’t watch, read or listen to the news) verbally assaulting them and pleading un-winnable cases with every tube of lotion and bottle of perfume confiscated. So I saw no reason to be just another thorn in the side of these people who are, after all, just doing their job. But second, these new security measures are ones I can actually see a point to. The people in charge saw a legitimate threat and they responded accordingly. Honestly, I’ll be more upset if they end up changing these rules back to the way they were before. I’ve said before, it’s consistency I want to see in airport security. If something is a threat today, then it should still be a threat tomorrow. Just because a month or a year or five years goes by without a similar plot being foiled doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who won’t try it again someday when we least expect it. If a terrorist can smuggle an explosive onto a plane in a Gatorade bottle in 2006 (or in 1995 for that matter, as we learn more and more that this was not even a new idea), he’ll still be able to do it in 2011. So yes, please be steady and vigilant about real and serious threats. But please don’t waste your time confiscating my tiny pliers and nail clippers.

So when all was said and done, I was through security and into the “sterile area” by 7:30, a full three hours before my flight’s scheduled departure.

Now if only the waitress at the restaurant I went into to have breakfast had been as swift and efficient as the security team. I could be mad at how slow and obviously apathetic to her customers she was during the hour I sat there, but honestly I feel for waiters and waitresses who work the breakfast shift. It really is the crappiest shift to work as far as I’m concerned. I worked as a waiter for two years during college and thereafter but thankfully only had to work two or three breakfast shifts that entire time. The problem with breakfast isn’t just that it’s a very busy shift. It’s probably no busier than a heavy lunch rush. But for all your running around, there is very little payoff once 11AM rolls around. Everything on the menu is cheap. Generally even the most expensive item on a breakfast menu costs about as much as an average-priced appetizer on the dinner menu. So that drives your tip percentage down right off the bat. Also, breakfast crowds tend to be a bit more irate when their food doesn’t come right away. They’re often coming from church, or are on their way to work and haven’t had anything to eat since they woke up that morning. They’re hungry, half-asleep and they want their food right now. Beyond that, the bulk of a breakfast crowd tends to be old people (who else in their right mind would get up an hour earlier than necessary when you could just as easily roll out of bed and have a bowl of cereal?) who are notoriously impatient, bad tippers, and often end up splitting their three-dollar breakfast specials and asking for separate checks.

So I gave the slow and passive-aggressively rude waitress quite a bit of slack. I knew I had plenty of time to kill before my flight. Plus, I was reading a fairly awesome book. KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE by Chuck Klosterman is a road trip book written by an author with an off-the-cuff style I can totally dig and relate to (and in a recent picture, this guy looks so much like me, minus the glasses, it’s scary).



The basic narrative is all about Klosterman, a writer for Spin magazine, traveling around the country to the places where rock stars died tragically and to places where other tragic deaths, somehow relating to rock-n-roll, occurred. One of Klosterman’s first stops is the former site of The Station in Warwick, Rhode Island, where one hundred people burned to death during a Great White concert. But this basic premise is really just a jumping off point for Klosterman to wax on about anything and everything that catches his fancy, from drugs, to pop culture to his own ex-girlfriends. The writing is at times self-indulgent and makes you wonder, “Is he actually going anywhere with this,” but for the most part it’s witty, intelligent and makes you laugh, ponder and say, “You know what, he’s exactly right about that.” This is exactly the kind of book I hope to one day write and publish – and was actually the catalyst that inspired me to pull out my laptop and start writing this blog today.

So I read my book contentedly for nearly an hour until I suddenly realized I had to leave right away. I won’t go into too many details, but the coffee they served here was so horrendous as to require four sugar packets before I switched over to Sweet & Low, and by the time I used it to wash down my heavy pancakes and the obscure meat patty they claimed to be sausage, I needed to go. No I really had to go. I didn’t bother waiting for the waitress to come back around. God knew what I would be capable of if I waited that long. I walked up to the bartender and begged him to make change for me, slapped my money and tip down on the table and ran to the nearest bathroom.

Some interesting graffiti I saw while sitting there doing my thing (in addition to the usual gang-related tag art) included:

SORRY ABOUT T.O. –DAL FAN

PHL IS SWELL

and the ever popular:

EAT CUNT

Exiting the bathroom, I saw a paper towel lying on the floor, upon which somebody had written: DO NOT USE.

So now I sit here in a phone booth with my laptop, taking advantage of the little shelf, the AC power socket and the fact that I can still bring this device through the security gate. It’s now just past nine-thirty. My flight starts boarding in a half-hour. Think I’ll go read a little more of my book and hope my experience at O’Hare in a week will be as pleasant (bowel movements notwithstanding) as today’s was.