For those of you who have been praying for my sanity, I thought you might enjoy this..... Dear Travel Department, I am writing to you because I feel the need to explain why I am submitting the following charges for reimbursement. I do my very best to stay within the guidelines that we have, as it is my desire to be a good steward of company funds and respect the opportunities I have to come to meetings such as this to enhance my practice. I am grateful for these opportunities, and do not understand people who abuse them. I dont want to simply send up some extra receipts with a short explanation and have somebody sign off on it. Below, you will find my submissions for the costs that were pre-allotted and were within the guidelines: *Tuesday, Delta, $25 checked bag fee *Tuesday, Met Cafe, $20 lunch on travel day *Thursday, Trulucks, $67.92 dinner *Saturday, US Airways, $25 checked bag fee Now for the explanations on the things that are outside the norm. I warn you in advance, it is truly unbelievable. The first anomaly surfaces on Tuesday afternoon when my cab driver drives away from the hotel in a hurry, carrying my wallet and my cell phone with him. I spent an hour or so trying to work with hotel security to secure a video of the license plate so that we can call the cab company and ask the driver to bring my things back. Upon his return, he offers what I believed to be an apology (my Spanish is poor), and offers me the reduced fare of $34 - my first anomaly. *Tuesday, $34 cab fare from airport Now things get interesting. I was scheduled to depart Miami at 4:41 on Friday afternoon, connect in Atlanta, and arrive peacefully home in Chattanooga, TN in time for supper with my new bride of 3 weeks. Around 7:00 and after four delays had ensured that I would of course miss my connection home from Atlanta, we are invited to board the aircraft. After the tepid throng of roughly 200 was seated and our luggage was jammed into someone elses carry-on bin space, our craft taxied for the runway. Our enthusiasm over our long-awaited departure, however, was quenched when the pilot announced that his cockpit time had expired, and that it was presently illegal for he and his crew to fly us to Atlanta. At this time, we are taxied back to the gate, and are required to leave the plane, along with our luggage. We are ensured that our flight will leave later that night, and that another pilot is on his way. Upon exiting the aircraft, I promptly use what is left of my cell phone battery (as my charger is trapped on the plane) to secure a later connection home from Atlanta to Chattanooga. No big deal. Near 9:30, Delta staff made the sobering announcement that no pilot could be found, and that our flight would unfortunately be cancelled. At this point, my recourse was to find a replacement flight. Since I believed that the cost burden for this should fall on Delta and not on our company, I immediately (after bumming a cell phone charge) called Deltas help line. No flights were to be had from either Miami or nearby Fort Lauderdale that night on Delta, US Airways, American, or United. Every ticket on every airline was booked. Not only that, but every ticket on every airline to every airport within a 3-hour drive to my home (Nashville, Knoxville, Huntsville, Chattanooga, Atlanta) was also booked for Saturday (the next day). After waiting for an hour on the phone with the Delta rep (it had been announced that airport staff were unable to assist with re-ticketing), a single ticket opened on American Airlines that would allow me to connect through Charlotte to Knoxville, rent a car for a short two hour drive, and arrive home by roughly 8:00 Saturday night. Either that, or wait until Sunday. Sold. This flight was booked on my behalf by Delta, and I then called our travel group to find a hotel for the night. The rep found me a room at the nearby Intercontinental (a company preferred spot, per her words) for $109, and I was grateful. As I was about to book it, our friends at Delta proudly announce via intercom that a crew has been acquired and that my original flight will leave for Atlanta around 1 AM. I tell our travel rep not to book the room for me, call Delta to cancel my flight for the next day, wrestle with a Delta supervisor to get myself reinstated on my original flight, and contact our travel agent a second time to ask for a rental car in order to make the two hour drive home from Atlanta at 3 AM (as I would naturally now miss my replacement connection there). Around midnight, I began to develop a headache - the remedy for which was my glasses, which were being held hostage in my luggage on the airplane. I firmly negotiated with the Delta staff to secure their release, at the expense of trekking to baggage claim and then re-entering through a security checkpoint 3 concourses away. Now 12:45 in the morning, the Delta staff once again assured our airplane blanket-laden company that the plane would in fact fly tonight, as they had been doing for the past several hours. The departure time had been pushed to 2:30-something (AM). Around 2:00 AM, the Delta staff began to trickle away from the boarding area desk, an armed bicycle cop with a RIOT PREVENTION badge nonchalantly appeared, and about fifteen minutes later, the announcement is made that the flight will be cancelled, that there will be no hotel accommodations, that no one there can help with re-ticketing, and that they dont know if or when the flight will be rescheduled. I call our travel department back a third time and an after hours rep exhausts a half-dozen hotels before finally finding me a $99 room at a nearby Courtyard. I salvage a taxi and stumble into the hotel around 3:00 AM after paying him $24 to drive me there - my second anomaly. *Saturday, $24 cab fare to hotel I plug my cell phone in and find the number for Avis in Atlanta to cancel my rental car reservation for 3 AM, then call Delta try to find a way home. After 117 minutes on the line with Delta, three associates who spoke little English (again, I regret to report that my Spanish is poor), two supervisors, and one mysterious disconnection, no amends could be made. I laid down at 5:00 AM for some shut eye, when I realized that the AC in the room was broken and that I was sweating. After a nice little Italian man came to my room to fix the AC, and after having been awake for roughly 24 hours, I finally went to sleep, but not before resigning myself to the fact that I would likely have to rent a car and drive the 11+ hours home when I awoke. I awoke 5 hours later and called our travel department one last time to grovel and plead before asking for a rental car. After her unsuccessful search for flights on all airlines at Miami and Fort Lauderdale, our agent began the process of booking me an Avis car for my trek - reluctantly, I might add, as she was concerned for my safety in driving so far while being so tired. As I was giving her my birthday, a single airline ticket opened up on US Airways from Miami that would allow me to arrive home around 10:00 tonight after connecting through Charlotte. I asked if the cost of my Delta ticket would be refunded, and if that would be used to offset this cost. She said that it would. I took it. I checked out of my hotel and paid the bill of $111.87 - the third anomaly. *Saturday, $111.87 Courtyard hotel bill I took the free hotel shuttle to the airport after checkout time passed, and during my 5 hour wait here, I decided it would be good for me to go ahead and document this, as it is is very possible that I am on Candid Camera and will, at any minute, be asked to look at a hole in the wall and smile at America. Finally, because I have spent 18 of the last 26 hours in an airport without ever actually flying on an airplane, you will not find a single $30 submission for my meal on Friday night. Instead, you will see a collection of smaller submissions that will consist of airport McDonalds, Cliff Bars, and bottled water. I hope to arrive home late tonight to my sweet wife and sleep this off. I also hope that this explanation will be sufficient for my unusual submissions. Please let me know what questions I can answer and what documentation I can provide. Im never leaving Tennessee again. At least not for another couple of weeks 😉 Warmest regards, -Adam
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 20:09:48 +0000
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