Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Live-In Jeans. Literally.

Warning: This post was written well past midnight, while waiting for my laundry to finish up. So please excuse the pissed-off nature of this post...I just couldn't help it given my helpless situation.

Well, I guess the title should say it all. If not, let me explain a lil more.

I'm back in the US of A for again. I'll be here for the next two months, so it's the not the shortest trip. Arrived here three days ago via Emirates (and hence via Dubai, which for me was a big thing, cos it was 14 yrs since I last lay foot in that place). Anyway, everything was fine until then, the flight, the transit...no complaints. We arrived at JFK (this time I have a team-mate travelling along with me) at 7am, got our luggage out and re-checked them in again for our next flight to DC. Arrived at the Reagan airport at around 2pm in the afternoon.

That's when everything started going downhill.

We waited at the baggage claim area patiently..all the people in our flight got their bags and left, one by one. My team-mate Shrenik got one of his bags (luckily the bigger one), but that's all. I didn't get both of mine. We then went to the airlines office and spoke to them. They took down our baggage codes and filed complaints. Then they very sweetly told us that there was nothing to worry about and we would get our bags by the next flight from JFK, which was that evening. They took down out hotel address and promised it would be delivered before nightfall.

That was 2.45pm, Monday.

Right now, it's 12.27am on a Thursday.

It's been three freakin days!

Well, almost three days till we got 2 bags. We had no updates of any of them till yesterday, but yes, we got two bags today night at 10pm. One of mine and one of Shrenik's. Unfortunately, but not very surprisingly, the way my luck has been recently, it was my SMALLER bag. The bag that had my sandals...around 3-4 used clothes..and some maggi and stuff. That's it. Everything else is in my other bigger bag! (sob, even my ext. HDD). To make things worse, the dharwad peda box I'd packed in had broken and all the pedas were lying crushed in between with my clothes. :(

The attempts to contact the airlines and enquire about my bag have been at the least, frustrating even bordering on sadistical humour. Bad enough that its a 1-800 number and you have to first answer a mechanical voice which sounds like a retarted robot. Then after all the pain and giving your reference number and other details, they route you to a helpline where finally get to speak to a human. That's when you start wishing you could instead have continued speaking to the robot. I ain't joking..they speak to you as if they were only supposed to read off 10 given lines. If they don't know the answer to your question, they just repeat any one of the 10 lines randomly. Today the guy asked me to give him my Indian address. I was like.."whhaa..what do you want to do? Deliver it back to India!?" But I didn't tell him that, I just gritted my teeth and told him. Aaaahhh...it almost makes you wanna bang the phone down and start laughing at the same time.

Anyway, enough said. Truth is I still don't have a single update as to where my other bag is right now. I can only hope and wait that I get it, better late than never.

Alright, that's that..I''m off to the laundry to get my clean clothes..and I'm actually feeling excited. Why? I've been wearing the same pair of jeans non-stop for the last four days, ever since I got out of home.

10 comments:

poloolop said...

that's bad luck. You'll most likely get $X per kg after they say that it cannot be recovered. Rejoice, and buy some new clothes. However do ask how much they pay per KG of luggage and what was the weight of the package they lost :-)

poloolop said...

Also buy a TB external hard disk this time. The prices are down.

Neil said...

haha .. this is friggin hilarious dude .. sorry to hear about it tho .. :))
sue them .. thats the best u can do .. n demand a million dollars for the mental agony u had to go thru .. for wearin the same pair of jeans for 4 days !! ;)
cheers buddy! :D

stan_da_man said...

@us: i hope i can claim insurance for delayed baggage..hope these guys dont want all kind of proof records then! I need my old HDD back! not a new one! :(

@nGeo: Thanks for the sympathies buddy :) yeah i should probably sue them if possible..will giv ya a call soon! :)

Rajesh K said...

Jean(pant) is ok, whatz up with the underwear...........???? :)

stan_da_man said...

@rajesh: well, i did what u usually do :)

Rajesh K said...

hmm, i never faced such a situation..but if it happens i would prefer not to wear.... WHICH MEANS YOU ARE NOT WEARING UNDERWEAR FOR THE LAST 3 DAYS..........AWESOME........

stan_da_man said...

@rajesh..Oh-kaaay..that means i DON'T do what u usually do...my smaller bag luckily had these vital things..and I didn't borrow Shrek's underwear too meanwhile ok!?!? :P

പയ്യന്‍ / Payyan said...

ahem... wts the big deal with wearing the same set of jeans for 4 days... i'd bet u did worse in college... :)

john kitchen said...

that's a great post. i think you should be pissed off more often ;)

Coursework Help | A Level Coursework | Buy Coursework