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Comment by awillen | Hacker News Reader

You're saying that from the perspective of someone who's not currently stranded at an airport. Your points are valid, but I think the irony is your expectations aren't reasonable.

These are people stuck in strange places who are anxious and uncomfortable. Some of them are probably going to miss important things. Others have to worry about kids/pets/etc. That's not to say they shouldn't be patient (and certainly they shouldn't be taking their frustrations out on the airline staff), but you're demanding rationality from people in the exact sort of situation where it can be really, really difficult for someone to be entirely rational.

They're trying to do what they can (call customer service) and find themselves helpless - that's not a situation where they're going to reason through the economics of call center staffing.

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> You're saying that from the perspective of someone who's not currently stranded at an airport.

I'm saying it from the perspective of someone who has been stranded at an airport. It's very easy to chill tf out for a while and wait in line for a while at the service desk to see what you've got to work with. You're not dying, it's not literal fight or flight. You're just stuck for a while.

> Your points are valid, but I think the irony is your expectations aren't reasonable.

I don't think it's reasonable to scream at service reps, which I guarantee will happen to nearly every single Southwest rep today. I've seen it so many times.

And it's the people who are confused why the customer service lines are jammed, those who are irrational, who are more likely to be the screamers. That's mainly who my comment was directed at.

> These are people stuck in strange places who are anxious and uncomfortable.

Those people need to relax a little bit.

Just a generation ago they could have been driving down a remote road, in an unreliable car with no cell phones.

What would they do then?

Well they'd start walking and nobody on earth would know where they were.

Being stuck at an airport, you have something in your pocket you can use to inform everyone of what is going on, handle getting your pets taken care of, etc.

Some of the anxiety is probably driven by the fact that other people's expectations of you and your ability to keep to a tight schedule have changed from what they would've been back then, as a result of the improved reliability of these things.

I was in the middle of the second outage today that significantly delayed a flight for me. I was fine.. I was just coming home from a trip so no big deal.

That said. I think people were understandably pretty pissed. I talked to a family that was taking their first vacation in 18 months. He only gets a handful of vacation days a year and due to cancellations their vacation has been ended. Just like that.

If I was them I'd be out of my skull. It'll probably be another full year before they get to try again.

I think is likely the big difference.

If you traveling for work.. no big deal Company may be out some money, you may be delayed for a meeting, etc etc

If you are traveling for personal... these things are not as easy to just rescheduled, push back, or change. The family likely also lost money on reservation especially if it was a "vacation package", which likely use the same excuse as Southwest so screw the family out of their money.

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