“That’s exciting! Does my new assignment have something to do with his announcement?” she asked.
“Yes it does,” he said, “I wasn’t joking when I said short term, it’s basically one day of work in the D.C. office. Nothing too complicated, we just need all hands on deck to fill out the crowd so it doesn’t look like nobody is there but the media covering the event. You’ll also be handing out press kits, and helping field what we hope are a lot of phone calls as the day goes on. Not exactly high-level tasks, but they need to be done.”
“I’m glad to help however I can, and since I’ve never actually visited Washington, it is actually kind of exciting.”
“In that case, instead of flying you up Sunday night, if you’d like a bit of time to do some sightseeing, you could leave Saturday morning. The campaign can afford to cover an extra night in a hotel if you’d like,” he offered.
“That sounds great,” Katie replied, “how do I…”
Jack cut her off, telling her all the arrangements would be taken care of. She received flight and hotel reservation emails later that morning.
Saturday morning, the first flight in her itinerary was right on time, the small jet making the short hop to Atlanta in less than 45 minutes as scheduled. Though it had started well, her tightly scheduled itinerary was already running into trouble before she even set foot in terminal C in Atlanta. A series of thunderstorms had begun a crawl up the east coast, delaying her flight to Washington four times, the departure time slipping all the way from 8:15 AM to 2:35 PM.
Resigned to losing Saturday as a day of sightseeing, Katie just wanted to get to Washington and focus on what she could do on Sunday. Having given up on Saturday, it seemed like a cruel joke when her much-delayed flight ended up being canceled entirely just minutes before boarding was about to start.
After an hour and a half in a customer service line waiting to be re-booked, Katie felt like crying when she was told the earliest flight she could be booked on wouldn’t arrive in Washington until early Sunday afternoon. Adding insult to injury, the several thousand other travelers stranded in Atlanta by the ugly weather had filled every hotel room anywhere close to the airport. Her entire weekend plan having been ruined, she had dinner, then picked up some snacks for later, and a book before finishing off her Saturday with a couple of glasses of wine at one of the overcrowded bars in terminal D, her home for the night.
Katie was glad about one thing; her decision to dress for comfort had definitely been a good move. Her comfy t-shirt, large, baggy full-zip hoodie, mid-weight leggings, and crocs wasn’t an outfit likely to impress anyone, but she had to think more restrictive clothes would have been even worse for trying to get some sleep while curled up on the seats at an unstaffed gate. She managed a few fitful hours of rest in the middle of the night after the announcements tapered off and before the various sounds made by the cleaning crew picked up.
Waking up stiff and rumpled a little before 6:00 AM, Katie was startled to see her improvised bedroom was full of other, luckier travelers getting ready to board their flight. She sat up, picked up her shoulder bag, pulled up the handle of her roll-on suitcase, and set out to find some breakfast. One egg sandwich, banana, and coffee later she checked a departing flight monitor to see if her flight was on schedule. “Of course not, why would it be,” she grumbled, seeing the first of what turned out to be three delays. She began to wonder if she would ever get out of this airport, but the delays finally stopped happening. She was in seat 21D, and amazingly enough, airborne a little before 4:00 PM.
Knowing the flight would take less than two hours, she closed her eyes and was sound asleep in a few minutes, her patchy sleep Saturday night making it easy to drop off now. The next thing she was aware of was her fellow passengers moving around the stationary plane and hauling their bags down from the overhead bins. “We’re in Washington already, finally! I can’t wait to get to my hotel, shower, and crawl into bed.”
Katie’s excitement was short-lived, as she heard the Captain making an announcement: “Once again folks, you don’t want to go too far from our gate, we could get cleared to continue on to Washington at any time, and once we do we’ll be pushing back from the gate in just a few minutes.”
“We’re not in Washington?” Katie asked a woman seated next to her.
“I guess you were asleep before,” her seatmate explained, “they told us just before landing that we needed to divert to Charlotte, something about tornadoes in Virginia.”
It took the still drowsy Katie a minute to process the news about the latest complication in her trip; she turned her phone on to check the time. Seeing 6:12 on the screen, she was disoriented enough to be unsure if that was AM or PM until she leaned over to look out a window; the position of the sun was high enough to clear up that mystery, giving her some hope that she might yet make it to Washington in time to get a halfway decent night’s sleep.
Her odds of getting to sleep in a hotel room were looking fairly good around 8 PM when the gate agent announced they were boarding the flight again. Everyone hustled back on board, stowed their bags, and actually cheered when the plane was pushed back from the gate. The plane took its place in the traffic jam leading towards a runway, with the co-pilot periodically announcing their place in the line. Starting at 27th in line, the announcements continued every few minutes; 21st in line, then 18th, then 12th, then 7th.
When Katie heard the pilot start his latest announcement by saying, “Well, folks…”, she knew the news was going to be bad. “A string of thunderstorms is moving into the Washington area, so we’re being held here. We don’t have to go back to the gate yet, so we’ll stay out here for a while and hope for a break in the weather.”
Katie and her fellow travelers spent the next 90 minutes going nowhere, then headed back to the terminal, the pilot’s apologies drowned out by a chorus of boos. The pilot explained that the crew had been working long enough that even if they were cleared to take off the duration of the flight would take them beyond the FAA’s limit for how many hours a flight crew can work in one day.
The agent at the gate greeted the weary passengers back from their round trip to the far end of the tarmac and back. Sixty-five grumpy people formed a line as the agent started printing their new boarding passes for a flight scheduled to depart at 5:00 AM.
As late as it already was, and with such an early flight the next morning, Katie resigned herself to another night camping out in an airport. She managed to get some decent barbeque for dinner just before the food court shut down, then settled in for the night in a rocking chair.
Other than waking up stiff and still tired, Katie’s Monday actually started off pretty well. She didn’t sleep through her phone’s alarm, waking at 4:20 as planned. She was onboard and seated by 4:40, and airborne by 4:55. The flight was quicker than advertised, and she was walking through the already bustling terminal at Reagan National by 6:50.
Her morning so far had gone as well as it possibly could, but Katie knew she didn’t have enough time to go to her hotel to clean up and get changed into office-appropriate clothing and still make it to the event at the Capitol anywhere near on time. Since her work assignment was the reason she was here, and she definitely didn’t want to make a first impression on the Congressman’s D.C. staff dressed as she was, she decided to try and find somewhere in the terminal where she could freshen up and get dressed.
“Right after I get some caffeine in me,” she thought, “I don’t want to be known as that ditz who fell asleep during her boss’s speech!” After downing a Starbucks double espresso and wolfing down an egg and spinach wrap, she began hunting for somewhere private to get out of her travel outfit and get dressed for work.
Katie had seen photos of tiny rooms available at some airports for rent by the hour, where a traveler could nap, work on their laptop or just get some quiet while waiting for their flight. “Or change clothes in a secluded space,” she thought. “kind of ironic, the last two nights I probably could have changed clothes right out where I ended up sleeping without anyone even noticing, but now that I actually need to change I’m in way too busy a space to try that!”
After wasting five minutes studying a directory to see if there was any place more suitable for changing her clothes, Katie headed to the first Ladies’ room she saw. The regular toilet stalls seemed kind of small, making undressing and changing clothes awkward, possibly even hazardous. The handicap-accessible stall was way bigger; Katie felt a little guilty about monopolizing the only accessible stall in the room, but not guilty enough to pass up the opportunity to take the large empty space.
Though very spacious, the stall had no shelf space, and just one small hook, which Katie hung her shoulder bag on. Another problem was a door that didn’t latch securely; not wanting to be interrupted in mid-change, she leaned her suitcase up against the door, and was relieved to see that it was heavy enough to keep the door from opening on its own. She knew if someone pushed hard enough she’d be having company, but was pretty sure her current setup was about the best she could do, so she moved on to her next problem.