Airports are stressful places, in today's case, Kansai and San Francisco, both of them. I had been sad, thinking of leaving my country and not coming back until next summer, but my sadness turned anger while I was making a long line to check in. I understand August is one of the busiest seasons, also I understand many passengers are excited about their trips abroad, but people, move! Take your turn! Respect others! Sigh, I was already tired in the line.
So, I had a mug of beer to refresh myself. Do I sound like alcoholic?!
After 10 hours of flight, I found San Francisco Airport was chaos. In fact, I was sent to the security check for international flights instead of that for domestics flights. The domestic security check area was obviously working well because of tons of inexperienced passengers.
I was scheduled to spend 11 hours of downtime in San Francisco, which was another factor that worn me out. Anyway, I asked a gate podium to change my flight to an earlier one. I didn't have anything to lose, then why not ask? Then, the answer was that the United would charge me $50 to put me in the standby list. What?! I haven't heard about or experienced that kind of thing. Usually, if there're any empty seats, they flexibly switch flights. Because I thought it's ridiculous, I gave up. But I changed my mind after a pint of beer. I went back to the same podium and found a different ground staffer there. I thought, "Good!" I was right. This person put me in the standby list without any conditions. I don't understand why the previous staffer asked me $50. Does United not have a standardized customer handling manual or something?
Thanks to the flexible ground staffer, I could catch the second earliest flight (I couldn't make it the earliest one) and arrived my hippie town five hours earlier than scheduled, yay!
DS and R (I realize that I don't know his last name) kindly came and picked me up. I am staying at DS's house for a couple nights. We celebrated my earlier arrival with wine. Yeah!
