Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Corporate whore travels

Right now, I'm in the middle of Pennsylvania. I'm here only for about 24 hours. Actually only 22 hours, since my flight got messed up.

I was to fly omaha to philly via o'hare. Weather thought otherwise--landing in chicago, i discovered my flight to be canceled. United did automatically rebook me, but that meant getting into philly three hours later than was planned. Oh, AND i had a 2.5 hour drive to take after I landed.

So, being the quick-thinking traveler that i am, i decided to see if they could just switch me to a flight into harrisburg, which actually was about an hour closer to my destination, but was too expensive to book originally. No sweat--they guy did it in 2 minutes. Now to re-arrange my rental car--nice and easy, the travel agent said i'd have a car in h-burg, to return to philly.

Wrong! Landing in harrisburg, i find out that the usual company has ZERO cars left. "You don't have my reservation?" Nope, was the answer.

OK, call back the travel agent. "Well, looks like it never got changed," the guy explained.

OK...what about a different place? No cars anywhere?!?! How?

So after a few minutes of thinking I'm totally trapped in Harrisburg, Pa., the guy decides to be just a scheming as I was in my flight rebooking--TELL a company that i'd return a car to harrisburg, then drop it at philly, and let the travel agency sort it out.

One of the few good things about traveling for work. I can get away with stuff like this. Won't be long before I have to pay for my own travel screw-ups.

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