Ned
01-31-2006, 02:12 PM
Francine Parnes has a great article in the New York Times today about "The Romance of Business Travel and Other Myths". The article contains some of the best travel stories I've read in a long time.
Here's an example:
WACKIEST MOMENT The flight out of Chicago had been delayed, there were no agents in sight and the passengers at the departure gate were restless. The phone at the desk rang, and a self-styled comedian answered it, identifying himself as Joe Customer.
"Then the other phone on the wall rings, so he answers that one, saying, 'Hello, Joe Customer here,' " recalled John G. Miller, a motivational speaker from Denver, who witnessed the incident. "He quickly goes back to the first phone. Then, 'Hold on, please. I think I have your party on the other line.'
"To everyone's amazement in the gate area, he reverses the handsets and puts them together, so the two phones are touching, one right side up and one upside down."
The tension-breaker put the crowd in stitches until "some tall woman dressed in her executive-boardroom airlines uniform that has never been wrinkled comes stomping down into the gate area," he said, and demanded to know who answered the phones.
Joe meekly raised his hand. After being scolded, he apologized to his fellow passengers. He was rewarded with loud applause.
I would have loved seeing the look on the woman in the airline's uniform when everyone at the gate applauded Joe!
Click on The Romance of Business Travel and Other Myths (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/business/31weird.html?ex=1296363600&en=348057aa742d139c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss) to read the entire article.
Here's an example:
WACKIEST MOMENT The flight out of Chicago had been delayed, there were no agents in sight and the passengers at the departure gate were restless. The phone at the desk rang, and a self-styled comedian answered it, identifying himself as Joe Customer.
"Then the other phone on the wall rings, so he answers that one, saying, 'Hello, Joe Customer here,' " recalled John G. Miller, a motivational speaker from Denver, who witnessed the incident. "He quickly goes back to the first phone. Then, 'Hold on, please. I think I have your party on the other line.'
"To everyone's amazement in the gate area, he reverses the handsets and puts them together, so the two phones are touching, one right side up and one upside down."
The tension-breaker put the crowd in stitches until "some tall woman dressed in her executive-boardroom airlines uniform that has never been wrinkled comes stomping down into the gate area," he said, and demanded to know who answered the phones.
Joe meekly raised his hand. After being scolded, he apologized to his fellow passengers. He was rewarded with loud applause.
I would have loved seeing the look on the woman in the airline's uniform when everyone at the gate applauded Joe!
Click on The Romance of Business Travel and Other Myths (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/business/31weird.html?ex=1296363600&en=348057aa742d139c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss) to read the entire article.