Meggisi

Today, just before my flight back to Minneapolis, I decided to grab a quick breakfast bite at Charley’s in the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The following interaction between me and the order-taker was classic. I am sure similar interactions and outcomes will happen a thousand times over across the USA today:

Latasha (food service worker): Can I hep who next?

Me: Hi, could I please have the egg, sausage, and cheese sandwich combo, except instead of coffee may I have a Diet Coke?

Latasha: Nope. Tha’s not a combo.

Me: Really? I can’t substitute a soda for a coffee.

Latasha: What do you mean?

Me: I want the combo meal, but for my drink I want a cold soda, not hot coffee.

Latasha: Tha’s not whuz in th’ COM-BOW! (Yeah, she raised her voice to me.)

Me: OK. Let’s try this. Order me the sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich, a hashbrown, and a Diet Coke.

Latasha: That’ll be $8.25.

Outcome for me – loss of $0.65, and of course I ended up getting the bacon egg and cheese sandwich. Classic fail.

So, there I was, having a nice Friday night supper with the kiddos when this story airs on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams. The lead in from Williams:

A lot of people have been wondering, what would really happen if jets tried to fly through some of this dust – this volcanic ash. A lot of people have not understood that this flight ban is not optional.

Really? I mean, REALLY?

Here is the piece from the broadcast:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just wanted to let you know that the people who are questioning the validity of such grave consequences as “total engine failure” are the same ones who commit one or more of the following acts of idiocy during air travel:

1. Get pissed off when security is “taking too long” when actually they should have gotten in line an hour ago.
2. Get drunk before the flight and then wonder why the flight attendant will not serve them onboard the plane.
3. When de-planing tell the pilots that “they didn’t like all those turns at the end.” (That happened to me on a recent flight. We got vectored off final approach to allow space for landing traffic on the crosswind runway prior to our arrival. The passenger said it was, “Too wild.” Yeah, but not as wild as colliding with a 737 at 100 miles an hour, pal.)
4. Ask the flight attendant to call the pilots and tell them that deicing the airplane is un-necessary since it wasn’t snowing. (But we had about an inch of ice on our leading edges. Despite our announcement to the passengers explaining why this was necessary, the passenger still told us that we “made him late just so we could make a few bucks.”)
5. Tell the pilots to just “punch through the line of thunderstorms and get us there on time.”
6. Break their tray table/seat recline function/headrest/etc. and then blame the airline for “shotty” airplanes.
7. Tell the gate agent that they want a 1st class upgrade comp’d because they had to change gates.
8. Write a letter of complaint to the airline because a flight attendant didn’t give them more than one peanut/pretzel bag until they asked for it.
9. Decide to get up to go use the lav during taxi-out to the runway.
10. Think it is appropriate to tell anyone that pilots are under-worked and overpaid.

Just to be clear, I am not a golf fan. Also, just to be clear, I have never been a fan of Tiger Woods. I have always thought him to be a smug, arrogant, self-interested pseudo-athlete. Oh yes, I deem golfers pseudo-athletes, like Tina Fey’s character “Ashlyn St. Cloud” in last night’s episode of SNL, who said that golf wasn’t a real sport:

I am willing to admit that – like in any activity requiring coordination and at times strength – golfers need to remain relatively fit. But not to the extent of athleticism required to compete in football, baseball, basketball, soccer, or hockey. Don’t get me wrong here…I am not trying to demean golf. It is an interesting game which requires a LOT of skill. But not athleticism.

So today, when the final round is played at 2:40 EDT, Tiger tees off within reach of the win. Everyone is keyed up on the real possibility of him making “the greatest comeback in sports history.” (Just run the search string “greatest comeback tiger woods” through Google and see what I mean.) The anticipation is so hyped up that the PGA estimates that the number of viewers could eclipse every past PGA television record today, even saying that they will attract more than 1/2 the viewership of the SuperBowl.

If he does win, I think we will truly know how much of a hype-driven sport golf truly is. We have already seen it in the Nike ad that has been showing this week during Masters coverage. It seems that in order to right his wrongs, Woods’ spin machine wants people to forget quickly that he has a real problem. How should he gain redemption? Win a major golf tournament? When? Now? A year from now? Should he be allowed to golf in the PGA anymore? How much is this different from Michael Vick (who is a true athlete, BTW)? When can we forgive you, Tiger?

It doesn’t matter. The forgiveness is window dressing at this point. The real message to society that Woods is sending is, “repentance is just a comeback away.”