Gratitude

I'm always about it

For me, celebrating Thanksgiving is all about celebrating the ways in which minor inconveniences piss me the hell off. Something happened to me this past week that slots neatly into this cherished category of newsletter.

This one goes out to all the homies at Lufthansa Customer Service. May you never find peace ❤️

3:30am flight out of Bangalore. I’m going BLR - FRA - EWR. Classic route.

11pm I come back from dinner at one of Bangalore’s finest breweries/restobars, filled with merriment and shit. I’m flagging from jetlag. I check Lufthansa app. Fuck me 1-hour delay.

Connection in Frankfurt was two hours originally—now it’s going to be one hour. Based on accumulated knowledge? I know that airport big.

While packing and showering I call up the fellas at Lufthansa customer service. I ask homie if 1 hour is too short of a time to make the connection—relaying, of course, my previous experiences at the Frankfurt International Airport. He says, “Naw.”

I go: “But just in case, is it possible to preemptively rebook to a later flight?”

Dude goes: “You’ll be 100% fine. 1 hour is more than enough time.”

At this point it’s like—yo you’re sick to my stomach fam.

It’s giving classic “Nabeel Gets Fucked By An Airline In A Way That Seems Impossibly Cruel And Calculated By A Divine Trickster, Perhaps Loki, the God of Such Tomfoolery.”

But I soldier on.

I hit him with: “Alright dude, but I’m just saying, if the flight is already delayed an hour, there’s a good chance it gets delayed again.”

He lies through his damn teeth: “1 hour is the minimum time needed to make a connection. You will be all good.”

I hear a smirk somewhere in there. He’s laughing. I’m about to get fucked by his employer and he’s laughing at me.

Next up I’m in the Uber to the airport listening to Mallu bangers.

Scrolling through comments on YouTube video as the car weaves through rancid Bangalore traffic. I feel similarly to these people lowkey.

I check Facebook as I often do in spare minutes.

What’s up then? My aunt posted a Facebook status: “Like for truth is!”

Just kidding.

What she actually posted follows thusly—she has a bunch of United points that are expiring in January and wants to know if anyone needs an upgrade.

And whose ass is flying United from FRA - EWR??????? That’s right.

The owner of that ass is Me.

I’m about to stunt in business class for the first time in my life. International. Take that, everyone I know from growing up who works in fintech and makes more money than me because I decided to piss everything away and go to grad school for fiction writing. Take that.

I hit up my damn matriarch: “Get the deal done.” (Text my mom to ask my aunt cause I’m too scared).

Aunt hooks it up fatty style. Make mental note to dap her up huge next time we connect. This will pay off—In Dividends.

Cut to me at the gate. BLR Airport Terminal 2. Beautiful interior landscaping. They’ve clearly put in a ton of foreign money here. I’m so Josh Giddey about flying business class that I’m watching shit like this:

I’m literally gloating. I’m texting the homies shit like this:

They’re gassing me up.

I’ve almost forgotten about the fact that my connection is painfully tight. Because I’m in the damn front of the plane soon enough.

Hear that, everyone? I’m United Polaris, Tarkovsky-style. (Replace “S” with “P”) At this point I’m finally excited for Gunn High School 10-Year Reunion at The Patio Bar and Grill in Downtown Palo Alto on Dec. 23 so I can tell people I’m familiar with the comforts of Business Class.

You can see where this is all going.

I’m on the first flight looking out the window. It’s now 5am. The plane is still taxiing. The dumbass flight tracker thing on the screen now says we’ll land at 10:30 and my United flight is at 11:05.

I am fucked.

In the back of my head I know where this is going. Here are the multiple scenarios possible:

1. I sprint to my next flight and somehow make it in time, but my checked baggage does not. That means I either have to wait at the airport for it to come on another flight or I go home and eventually it gets delivered there.

2. I miss the connection but get rebooked onto a flight a couple hours later and my checked bag is chill AND they hook it up by keeping my upgrade. That’s best case scenario lowkey.

3. I miss my connection and get rebooked and my checked bag is chill or whatever but they’re unable to keep my upgrade.

I’m thinking of all these things as the plane finally takes off and I’m listening to the Lonely Island Podcast episode about “Iran (So Far Away),” a seminal classic.

First flight is chill. I watch The Intern and sleep halfway through. Anders Holm is in it randomly.

We land and I fucking book it.

I’m turning on the jets. I made the smart decision earlier in the night to go plastic Birks—much more mobile and dynamic than my usual leather Boston Birks. I’m honestly cooking.

I think I can make it.

Then they fucking make me go through security.

This is where I lost, team.

Get to the damn gate I’m dripping in sweat and drenched smell like shit—dude goes, “We just closed the boarding gate.”

Oh really?

You just closed it?

My damn app says boarding closes at 10:50am. I made it here by 10:50. Give me a damn break.

Homie doesn’t budge.

Looks like I’m not making it on this United flight.

One path eliminated. Two left.

Lufthansa Customer Service we meet again. This time I’m in front of you, physically, at a desk in the Frankfurt International Airport.

New guy rebooks me onto a flight that leaves in two hours. That’s big. I’m honestly happy about that, if we’re keeping it #ABuck. Checked bag is totally in play.

Final nail in the coffin: it’s a Lufthansa flight, not a United one.

“Yo…any chance you can transfer the business class upgrade? I know Lufthansa and United are both part of Star Alliance, and their flights are often cross-listed.”

Dude goes behind the room to ask his supervisor.

Comes back.

It’s a no, fam.

Ultimately, I am defeated. I get rebooked onto a perfectly fine flight two hours later and make it safely and with a relatively minimal delay, with all my luggage, in Economy Class.

Fuck the system.

Fuck this.

I am calling on the International Criminal Court to arrest the first guy I called on Lufthansa Customer Service. If no one is going to get Netanyahu, because everyone is too cowardly and cynical and the “international rules-based order” is a sham that Western countries claim to believe in until it jeopardizes their own interests—then I suggest we at least get the next best guy. That guy from Lufthansa.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Next time you make it back safely through the miracle of standardized air travel, don’t forget how much I suffered. In the grand scheme of things, this was 100% a travesty. Think about that next time. Just even try to wrap your dumbass heads around it. Yeah.

Ritam’s Footnote

*turning on my powers of empathy* Wow, yeah, if that happened to me, I’d be pissed off! *turning them off* But some people have real problems.