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Jun. 20th, 2006 10:01 pm
portland, oregon and elsewhere
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toastykittenWe just finished having dinner with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angeeela and some other friends - it was, as usual, yummy, and we got to meet the owner's cute daughter. She recognizes us now, and is always friendly - we always bring people in to eat there because a. it's French, therefore it is good food, and b. it's so home-y, and c. it is relatively cheap.
Our second and final day in Portland started off slowly. While printing out our ticket confirmations for the flight out that day, we ran into a glitch - I got assigned a seat, but Mark got what was, according to United, a "Departure Management Card". The DMC instructed you to wait at the gate for your seat assignment or for if you were stand-by. Mark bought his ticket from United several weeks before I did.
Mark called the airline, and spent nearly half an hour trying to figure out if he had a seat or not. The customer service representative kept talking around him in circles, trying to avoid the word "confirmation", and eventually Mark broke it down to him: "I am going to ask you a DIRECT question. When I get to the airport, and I do not want to be stand-by, I do not want to be offered stand-by, and I ask the person at the gate if I have a confirmed seat in 10A, will I be able to get on the plane? YES OR NO. And I would like your employee ID number or some identification so that I can refer to you if I have trouble at the gate." Finally the guy confirmed that he had a seat on the plane.
Did I mention that the first time Mark tried to explain his problem, the customer service rep looked at his flight from San Francisco to Portland? Not from Portland to San Francisco, which is what he was asking about. And when he pointed that out, the rep get all testy with him.
This isn't the first time it happened, either - last time it happened, we woke up at 6 in the morning and I drove him to the airport. Then an hour and a half later I got a phone call from Mark saying that United overbooked his flight and that he would have to go back to the airport eight hours later. And I had to go pick him up and drive him back. This wasn't some vacation thing, either - it was corporate travel to a short conference, and time taken out meant that he had less time to prepare for his stuff at the conference. He lost nearly a day's work because he couldn't be at that conference. United offered him some compensation, but still - I don't think it's any way to do business. And especially not with your corporate customers, who don't have the kind of time that they seem to think stand-by passengers do. Conferences won't stop just because you got pushed off a flight.
Anyway, so Alice made breakfast for us. Man, foodies are awesome. Zack and Alice are so endearingly liberal it's cute. I noticed that they had a ton of Aveda and Body Shop stuff, and Alice's eggs were from "Vegetarian-fed, cage-free" chickens. Her bacon had "forty percent less fat than regular bacon", and it actually tasted better! She explained that they'd probably cut the meat from a different side of the stomach than normal bacon.
Mark and I made plans to meet up with his friend Matt, who works at IBM. Matt doesn't have a car, so we had to wait for him to shower up and get on the train first. We spent nearly half an hour looking for a place to eat - it seemed like every restaurant we went to was closed. Finally we ended up at a seafood grill place. Along the way, we passed by some street festival - I think it was Pride weekend or something, but I didn't want to believe it because it looked kind of sad. There was hardly anyone there, and the people who were there were just sort of milling around with no energy. It's nothing like it'll be here in San Francisco.
Oh, and we did not get smited. Perhaps there wasn't enough energy.
I fall in love with places so easily. I could see myself living there, but I haven't confirmed that they have any good dim sum, and their produce doesn't seem to be as good as what we get in the Bay. I love walking around all the old church buildings, though, and I love all the greenery. I love that the blocks are so short, and that there's a lot of interesting literature. I love how laid-back it is - time seems so slow and mellow compared to the way it is in San Francisco, where everyone's sort of bouncing off the walls with energy.
We left early to ensure that Mark would get a seat. It was a good thing we did, because less than an hour after we arrived, the people at the gate started informing other stand-by passengers that they were kicked off the flight.
angeeela and some other friends - it was, as usual, yummy, and we got to meet the owner's cute daughter. She recognizes us now, and is always friendly - we always bring people in to eat there because a. it's French, therefore it is good food, and b. it's so home-y, and c. it is relatively cheap.Our second and final day in Portland started off slowly. While printing out our ticket confirmations for the flight out that day, we ran into a glitch - I got assigned a seat, but Mark got what was, according to United, a "Departure Management Card". The DMC instructed you to wait at the gate for your seat assignment or for if you were stand-by. Mark bought his ticket from United several weeks before I did.
Mark called the airline, and spent nearly half an hour trying to figure out if he had a seat or not. The customer service representative kept talking around him in circles, trying to avoid the word "confirmation", and eventually Mark broke it down to him: "I am going to ask you a DIRECT question. When I get to the airport, and I do not want to be stand-by, I do not want to be offered stand-by, and I ask the person at the gate if I have a confirmed seat in 10A, will I be able to get on the plane? YES OR NO. And I would like your employee ID number or some identification so that I can refer to you if I have trouble at the gate." Finally the guy confirmed that he had a seat on the plane.
Did I mention that the first time Mark tried to explain his problem, the customer service rep looked at his flight from San Francisco to Portland? Not from Portland to San Francisco, which is what he was asking about. And when he pointed that out, the rep get all testy with him.
This isn't the first time it happened, either - last time it happened, we woke up at 6 in the morning and I drove him to the airport. Then an hour and a half later I got a phone call from Mark saying that United overbooked his flight and that he would have to go back to the airport eight hours later. And I had to go pick him up and drive him back. This wasn't some vacation thing, either - it was corporate travel to a short conference, and time taken out meant that he had less time to prepare for his stuff at the conference. He lost nearly a day's work because he couldn't be at that conference. United offered him some compensation, but still - I don't think it's any way to do business. And especially not with your corporate customers, who don't have the kind of time that they seem to think stand-by passengers do. Conferences won't stop just because you got pushed off a flight.
Anyway, so Alice made breakfast for us. Man, foodies are awesome. Zack and Alice are so endearingly liberal it's cute. I noticed that they had a ton of Aveda and Body Shop stuff, and Alice's eggs were from "Vegetarian-fed, cage-free" chickens. Her bacon had "forty percent less fat than regular bacon", and it actually tasted better! She explained that they'd probably cut the meat from a different side of the stomach than normal bacon.
Mark and I made plans to meet up with his friend Matt, who works at IBM. Matt doesn't have a car, so we had to wait for him to shower up and get on the train first. We spent nearly half an hour looking for a place to eat - it seemed like every restaurant we went to was closed. Finally we ended up at a seafood grill place. Along the way, we passed by some street festival - I think it was Pride weekend or something, but I didn't want to believe it because it looked kind of sad. There was hardly anyone there, and the people who were there were just sort of milling around with no energy. It's nothing like it'll be here in San Francisco.
Oh, and we did not get smited. Perhaps there wasn't enough energy.
I fall in love with places so easily. I could see myself living there, but I haven't confirmed that they have any good dim sum, and their produce doesn't seem to be as good as what we get in the Bay. I love walking around all the old church buildings, though, and I love all the greenery. I love that the blocks are so short, and that there's a lot of interesting literature. I love how laid-back it is - time seems so slow and mellow compared to the way it is in San Francisco, where everyone's sort of bouncing off the walls with energy.
We left early to ensure that Mark would get a seat. It was a good thing we did, because less than an hour after we arrived, the people at the gate started informing other stand-by passengers that they were kicked off the flight.
no subject
thank you for taking us there!
now we've got to get ur asses to one of our ghetto spots :)