Still more airport follies

I’m drinking a bottle of Stone Ruination IPA.  Yep, I’m back in Milwaukee for seasonal family reasons, and I’m taking maximal advantage of a place where I can buy outstanding beer at large chain supermarkets.  Capitalism is fucking amazing.

To get here, of course, I had to fly — this whole “can’t afford to park and insure a car” grad-school thing is getting old.  While I was working up a temper at the airport — er, that is, checking in — the ticket agent informed me that I’d be charged $25 for my single checked bag.

“Sounds good to me,” said I.

“It’s not good; it ought to be free,” said he.

Have you ever tried to teach someone basic economics?  I mean, really basic economics, like “shipping this suitcase from Vancouver to Milwaukee requires a few kilos of jet fuel, several ounces of diesel for the runway tractors, and at least ten bucks’ worth of labour from half a dozen or more ground crew, and that money has to come from somewhere“?

Doesn’t take, does it?

I indicated to this gentleman that I was happy to pay the processing cost for my own bag; that I was pleased not to be a burden upon anyone flying without checked luggage (no reason they should be gouged to support me, after all); and that I was utterly thrilled not to have to carry the cost of the jackasses behind me with (I shit thee not) over three checked bags per passenger.  I suggested that his airline would have to make up the cost somehow, probably as a factor of rent to the airports at which they operated, and that if it didn’t come from the passengers it’d probably come from his pension fund.

And still he stolidly insisted that it was unfair for me to pay my own way.

I asked him whether, since he had such a strong opinion on the matter, he’d be willing to pick up the cost of my $25 bag fee out of his own pocket.  I got the “Are you a fucking moron?” look, with narrowed eyes and everything.  That’s a good start.

Once free of the gate agent, I was subjected to airport security.  Y’know, back when I suggested that most governments neglected to grant themselves the right to commit rape, I wasn’t pointing out an omission.  I don’t mean to trivialize rape, nor do I mean to trivialize more serious abuses, but if I’d done to one of my students what that CATSA fucker was doing to everyone who walked through their magnetometer I’d be serving ten years for sexual assault.  I presume that their decision to either pornograph or grope every passenger flying through the airport was a reaction to the release of the Air India bombing report, but if the Government of Canada is going to be feeling up every man, woman, and child who wants to get on an airplane for the rest of the foreseeable future, the least they could do is buy me a few shots of tequila first.  No need for lobster; I’m a cheap date.

Nevertheless, I’m (for the present) back in a free country, as evidenced by the fact that I can get the best of Stone’s beers at every local grocery store.  Being able to buy hooch alongside my steak and eggs really is that big a deal, and it’d be right nice if British Columbia would unfuck themselves and get with the goddamn programme.