By the way two dozen people started wailing and gnashing their teeth, you would have thought they just discovered they were left out of rich Uncle Smedley’s will.
I was standing in line at the Regan National Airport in DC watching a thunderstorm broil outside when the gate agent informed people that all the fights to Timbuktu and Kalamazoo had been cancelled.
Hell hath no fury like irate airlines passengers recently informed they will spend the night at their own expense in a strange city. Airlines won’t comp you a hotel if the weather causes a delay.
The crowd grew surly as people hurled insults at the gate agents.
I was tired, too. I wanted to go home, too. I had been working hard the past few days and sleeping poorly in a noisy hotel at night.
Then an old Glenn Campbell song started rattling around in my head:
You’ve got to try a little kindness, just show a little kindness, just shine your light for everyone to see. For if you try a little kindness, then you’ll overlook the blindness, of a narrow minded people on the narrow minded streets.
I stood in line behind a young hipster who whined incessantly that his world was coming to end because his flight was canceled. No, she told him, I can’t get you out of DC at all on any other flights tonight.
I approached the same agent with a smile on my face and told her she was doing a good job, that I felt sorry for her, and hoped she received hazard pay.
Well, lookey there, if I didn’t mind waiting there was a flight leaving later she could put me on.
And it just happened that she could give me an upgrade to first class for free.
I wonder what that hipster would have received had he just been nice.