Budget air travel is both the greatest blessing and the most spectacular curse of the modern era. On one hand, you can fly from one country to another for the price of a sandwich and a coffee. On the other hand, that sandwich and coffee will be overpriced, your seat will not recline, and your luggage allowance will be approximately the size of a throw pillow.
To add to the hassle, you can almost put money on the possibility of a flight delay. And when that delay happens at ten o'clock at night with no staff in sight and no answers coming, some people handle it with patience and grace. Others see this as the time to go full Karen and call the national guard.
More info: Reddit
Budget air travel is a miracle of the modern age, right up until your flight is delayed at ten o'clock at night and the airline's phone lines have already closed
Image credits: 4045 / Magnific (not the actual photo)
Vueling cancels nearly one in five of its international flights, its staff disappear when things go wrong, and one night, this mother decided the airport was going to answer for all of it
Image credits: Frolopiaton Palm / Magnific (not the actual photo)
She wanted the airport to force the airline to operate the flight, but was told repeatedly that the airport and the airline were entirely different companies, to no avail
Image credits: kasto80 / Magnific (not the actual photo)
After five minutes of going nowhere on a slow night, the narrator turned the speaker on, the whole team gathered round, and the entertainment value of the next fifteen minutes was considerable
Image credits: cervezaenelsol
She demanded the president, the army, and God's intervention, insulted the narrator's heritage, and kept going for twenty uninterrupted minutes before finally running out of steam
Our narrator worked the phones for an airport help desk, which meant fielding complaints about airlines that were entirely separate companies and had absolutely nothing to do with the airport itself. The Spanish budget airline Vueling was a frequent offender, notorious for late-night delays that almost always turned into cancellations, followed by all staff vanishing until the logistics were sorted.
At around ten on a quiet autumn night, a woman called the airport, screaming. Her daughter was at the airport waiting for a Vueling flight that had been delayed two hours; she had a medical convention the next morning in another city, and this flight absolutely could not be cancelled.
The narrator explained, patiently and repeatedly, that the airport and the airline were different companies and there was nothing they could do to force Vueling to operate a flight. The woman was not interested in this information. After five minutes of going in circles, the narrator noticed the whole team was having a slow night and turned the speaker on.
The woman was mid-explanation about how the airport staff would be accomplices if her daughter lost her life while waiting, and how people would stop flying entirely because of this travesty, and how the narrator personally would not be able to feed their children. The team was hooked.
When the woman demanded they call the president or deploy the army, the narrator offered to call the president immediately if she could provide the number. She dropped that line of argument. She found time to ask if they knew what guardian angels were and to confirm that God took better care of his creatures than the airport did.
She even had the gall to tell the narrator that having not been born in Barcelona meant they lacked the heart to understand how beautiful the city used to be. Pure class! She eventually ran out of steam and hung up. Soon, the daughter called, was very polite, and sorted herself out like a completely reasonable adult. The apple, in this case, had fallen a considerable distance from the tree.
Image credits: The Yuri Arcurs Collection / Magnific (not the actual photo)
Under European Union regulations, passengers whose flights are cancelled or significantly delayed are entitled to compensation of up to €600, depending on the length of the route. The daughter, rather than being a victim of an unstoppable catastrophe, was actually sitting on a fairly solid financial claim that a calm phone call to Vueling during business hours could have started processing.
The compensation would have been warranted given Vueling's track record. The airline cancels approximately 19.55% of its international routes and 16.57% of its domestic ones, which by any reasonable measure is an extraordinary rate of not doing the thing that airlines are supposed to do.
As for the people on the other end of that phone call, according to Invoca, up to 74% of call center agents are at risk of burnout, and 62% report chronic stress-related symptoms. A twenty-minute shift of being told you are an accomplice to someone meeting their grave, that God is disappointed in you, and that you lack heart because of where you were born isn’t healthy for anyone.
So we can’t really blame this agent for putting this delusional mother on speaker for everyone to enjoy. Sharing the trauma in the customer care call center might be the only way they could cope that night. Next time your flight is delayed, just remember you aren’t alone. And no amount of army members or presidential involvement will get you in the air.
Do you work in a call center and have a similarly awful story to share? Tell us about your worst Karen nightmares in the comments!
People in the comments agreed the airline wasn't their favorite, but thought the narrator did the only reasonable thing, and that was to be entertained
