My frequently flying friend had a gripe. If only he’d seen the news
Idea
I have a lawyer friend who specializes in both maritime and space law and therefore advises shipping companies, space agencies, island nations, and emerging despots. One morning, when he was living in Montreal, he woke up, checked his frequent flyer points, and was furious to find that United Airlines had given him incomplete information.
He ordered a coffee from a hole in the wall on the way to work, and when he handed the barista a tenner, the barista just nodded and smiled sadly, as if money had been the answer yesterday and retail had suddenly failed. “A hippie just starting out,” he thought, happily lapping up the froth of his free latte. “Fool him more. If I’m lucky, I’ll do a dozen favors before he goes crazy.”
After settling into his office, he called United Airlines and, after an arduous wait, reached a woman named Belinda from customer service. It quickly became clear that Belinda was the flighty type. It’s good for piloting, but not for customer service.
“Belinda,” he said, “settle down and listen. On the 15th of last month, I flew to Florida on your airline to meet with NASA. Five days later I flew to Greece to meet you…never mind who I met there. To date, I have not received frequent flyer points for either flight. Now, I have been a regular customer of your airline for years and that is not good enough.”
“Calling for your frequent flyer points?”
“Doesn’t it seem like it, Belinda? Because that’s all I was talking about?”
“Today?”
“It must be today. It always is. There is no other.”
“Well, our systems are stretched…”
“I don’t want to hear about your systems, Belinda. Anything being said about your systems makes me think less of you. When I pay for my flights, your systems are fine. Then there’s no talk of extended systems.”
“I just answer a lot of calls and…”
“You get paid to field them, Belinda. Do it with composure… gracefulness if you can manage it.”
“A call about frequent flyer hotspots.”
“Yes. Two trips: Montreal to Florida, Montreal to Athens.”
With this rude tone, my friend got a promise from Belinda that her frequent flyer points would be transferred to her by the end of the day. Having defeated Belinda and defended her air miles, after hanging up the phone, she put her feet up on her desk and turned on the office television to watch the day’s news. Just in time to see the first of the Twin Towers collapse into clouds of rubble and blood. It was September 11, 2001. America was having a hard time. And United Airlines more than most.
Although I portray him as a snitch, my friend is a kind man who does a lot of work for free, defending moribund ecosystems and wheezy cultures against the appetites of modernity. He would have been more polite than I told him in the above conversation; I must have written this appeal to a dazed Belinda while the towers burned.
In the years since that terrible day, he often thinks with horror of Belinda and the wound she inflicted on his view of humanity. She imagines him sitting there watching the call queue on his screen, family members desperately asking for news from their loved ones, and him arguing over airline miles. Halfway through this speech he must have realized that while the world is burning, a certain kind of man who smells the smoke will demand an immediate switch from Economics to Business. This is something we all learn eventually, but usually incrementally.
I imagine Belinda, now 50, living in a grassy suburb of Chicago, regularly telling this story to angry Illinoisans over dinner and them cursing the Aussies. My friend here in Melbourne still tells this as an anecdote against himself, still astonished by his accidental inhumanity as a young man.
When he turned on the TV that morning, he realized what a jerk he was. We are not often so vividly enlightened about our insensitivities – or at all.
But 9/11s are not uncommon. Given the uncertain and fragile nature of life, a large percentage of us are going through personal, non-newsworthy 9/11s at any given time – the death of the dog, the father, the diagnosis, the loss of a lover, or the dream… The next time you talk to Belinda, it’s worth remembering that buildings are always burning, somewhere, for someone.
Anson Cameron is a columnist for The Age on Spectrum and the author of many books, including Boyhoodlum and Neil Balme: A Tale of Two Men.
