Two Unrelated Incidents from an Otherwise Hum-drum Tuesday

I had to call American Airlines to confirm Sadie’s In-Cabin Pet reservation. She will be traveling with us to Austin but she was not appearing on my account online and that concerned me. If you’ve ever called American Airlines, you’ll know that it takes a good 10 minutes to maneuver your way through their website. During this time, you will be asked to say full sentences instead of just ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to move on to the next menu. “I have an existing reservation.” Often, no matter how articulately you enunciate, the computer will respond, “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.” Then you have to say it again. It’s best to make these calls in private because you will sound like a fool. Also, pressing zero to reach an operator does not work in this instance. You will simply be asked to answer more questions before you can talk to an actual person. And don’t even bother calling if you don’t have your frequent flyer account number, flight number, dates of departure, cities and connecting cities on your itinerary, Great-Grandmother’s dog’s middle name, the meal you ate last Saturday and a myriad of other pieces of information.

When you do finally reach a person to ask a simple question, you might speak to the person I did yesterday. It is always unfortunate when you cannot determine whether the ticketing agent is male or female by their voice. I think he/she may have mentioned their name to start but because this person sounded like they had just been toking up in the parking lot on their lunch break, I could barely understand what mumble mouth was saying.

Ashley: Hi, I’m calling to confirm my in-cabin pet on an existing reservation.

Agent: OK, did you want to book them round trip?

Ashley: No, I already made a reservation but it didn’t show up online so I’m confirming that you do have a pet booked with my ticket. Does it not necessarily appear online?

Agent: I don’t really know what shows on the accounts online.

Ashley: Oh. Do you have a pet listed on my reservation with confirmation number GTRVOL (side note: Why is this still called a confirmation number when it consists only of letters?)

Agent: Yes, we do.

Ashley: OK, thanks.

Part of me is still a tad concerned that Sadie’s reservation does indeed exist. I don’t want her to be turned away at the gate. Another part of me can’t fathom going another round with that menu before reaching a person. Plus, if I call again, will they put notes on my account such as “difficult customer – seat next to overweight smelly man on board”? I think I just have to hope for the best on this one. Only 16 days!

Incident dos!

You may or may not know that John is a notorious sleep talker. I find great amusement in this and will typically try to keep him talking just to see what he has say. His conversations are usually nonsensical. He hasn’t had an outburst in quite awhile but, I think this will suit your needs.

Around 2:00 am last night, John grabbed my face with his palm and squeezed. It was sort of like a sadistic game of ‘Got Your Nose.’ This woke me out of a dead sleep so I say, “hey” when what I was thinking was, “hey – what the heck do you think you’re doing, trying to suffocate me you wacko?” He immediately apologized and rolled back over. About an hour later, he wakes me up again to say, “I’m sorry. I was dreaming I was picking up a pencil.” Oh, I see now. What a perfectly normal explanation, in some crazy dream world in which a pencil resembles my face.

Then, while we were getting ready for work today, he claimed he was actually dreaming that he was pushing Sadie off of him. This is quite different than pencil picking up especially as Sadie was nowhere near him at the time of the attack. Quite narrowly, I survived.