You have seen me at airports, in the baggage claim area. I'm the guy with the long-sleeved white shirt and tie, suit vest or jacket, and a sign with a name on it. The name will be that of the person I'm meeting.
I wear a look of distant boredom. Making eye contact with hundreds of strangers is tiring, so I focus on the middle distance and try to appear like I'm not scoping out the fun parts of ladies.
Time passes. The object is to find my customer amongst the sea of transitory humans who are all, also, looking for someone. Hence the sign.
The sign is important for two reasons. It keeps most people away - I'm someone else's and I'm not available to dance. The sign is meant for the one with whom I have been promised a dance. Sure, it's an odd kind of dance involving them sitting behind me while I drive, me being super-polite, and me be transparently obsequious, but it's a dance nonetheless.
Which is why today was so odd. I was there, looking blank, with a sign. The people who were looking for me saw the sign. They decided not to make themselves known to me.
The people - a mother and two teens - didn't know the steps of the dance. I saw them look and point, but people do that all the time. They didn't look, point and then walk up to me.
That's the way the dance works; I do not know you, and likewise you do not know me. It's my job to provide the sign, and it's your job to recognize your name. And then walk up and stand in front of me. If you choose not to participate in the dance, even after you have said you would, be not surprised if I go home.
Pic from here [link]
6 comments:
The people - a mother and two teens - didn't know the steps of the dance. I saw them look and point, but people do that all the time. They didn't look, point and then walk up to me.
seriously? sweetheart, they deserved to be left standing at the curb! xoxoxoxo
Seriously, Sugar.
The reason I know this is that I noted at the time that they broadly fitted the category of people for whom I was looking. But they walked on by.
After about ten minutes, one of the daughters came back to me and said,"Ummm, like, errr, that's us" pointing at the sign.
Good grief.
perhaps, they were just too unsophisticated to realize that the chances of another family having the same name, on the same flight, at the same airport, at the same time were statistically improbable...I, on the other hand, would love to have my name on a card and would absolutely rush to the person holding it! i really do hate having to fetch my luggage and drag it to the queue for a cab or some other sort of airport transport! ;) xoxoxox
..which is why we love folks like you as customers, Sugar. Happiness and gratitude go a loooooong way :-)
It sure did, Snaf. And you'll never guess who I saw while I was waiting...
Good grief! (As Charlie Brown would say.) Those folks were way too dumb to live. How the hell could they afford your services? (You subservient but expensive devil you.)
Well, there is that family with 16 or 18 kids, I would have thought they were too dumb to live too but with all the publicity I imagine they are doing quite nicely. Let us know if you ever get to cart them around.
I sure will, Don. Publicity + Oddity = Big Money, apparently.
In the case of my mother and teens, there is actually more to the story. This was their third attempt at catching a flight. At one point, when the husband called to let The Boss know that they'd arrived at the departure airport too late, he said that his wife was:
"A flake".
;-)
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