Note: The Monday Taki post is up and it is related to the topic of the day. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door so if you do not have a subscription, get one. SubscribeStar and Substack.

For most people, travel has always been looked upon as the necessary evil, a thing you get through in order to get somewhere. That week on the beach in Florida during the winter means a day of torment at airports to get there. The trip back is extra miserable because you are tired from having fun all week. Experienced travelers, on the other hand, figure out the system and it becomes a habit of mind. You know how it works so you know how to make it work for you.

Before Covid, the thing I could see was that the system was simply overloaded at various key points. The security system, for example, had broken down. At some airports you would wait over an hour for totally disinterested TSA workers to process you through the system. In Europe, you would hustle from line to line to clear passport control, when the only actual check was a zombified worker looking at the millionth passport that day and waving you along.

Covid cured that by first reducing travel to the absolute minimum and then conditioning people to not want to travel. An overlooked result of the almost two years of stay at home orders is people got used to staying home. In overgrown metro areas like Washington DC, working at home is common. Business travel never bounced back because everyone is used to Zoom sessions now. Now, economic concerns have put a damper on the travel business.

You see this at airports. I have been on the road a a fair bit this year and the one thing I keep seeing is light traffic at airports. There are fewer flights, so they are just as full, but the number of people in the concourse is still below the pre-Covid days. The travel industry claims things are bouncing back, but they lie like everyone else these days, so I trust my lying eyes rather than their lying mouths. This year on my travels I have not run into the volume issues anywhere in the system.

I just returned from Nashville, which is a sprawling metropolis full of strangers from other stranger lands. That is a recipe for a mobbed airport before a holiday. In the old days, the Sunday before Thanksgiving would have been nuts and got increasingly nuts through the week. The reason is all of the newly arrived mountain folk would have headed back to where they belong for the long holiday. Instead, the airport was as quiet as I have seen an airport in ages.

On the other hand, something else is happening. At BWI on Friday I tried to buy a beverage at one of the shops and the non-English speaking clerk just said something that sounded like “no work” to people. The payment system was down, as best I could tell, so she was left to chase away customers. I was reminded of the scene from the movie Idiocracy where the heroes arrive at Costco. The great thing about that scene is you realize the system can stagger on a long time.

On the plane, one of the flight crew sounded like a satirical version of how a waifu would sound if it came to life. The other was a local girl, for sure. Her accent and heavy use of local slang was oddly amusing. There was a third person on the crew who was the greeter at Costco in the above clip. I got the sense that he was in training, but it could simply be that he was not allowed to work unsupervised. He liked tossing packs of snacks at people from a few rows distance.

At Nashville, the crew at the Alamo rental counter was another collection of extras from that frighteningly prophetic movie. There was no line but a mass of people waiting, so I knew right away they were out of cars. The three clerks just stared out into space like they had been smoking weed prior to my arrival. Finally, one acknowledged my existence and waved me over to his station. He silently processed my order and then grunted about the wait and pointed to the mob.

Ninety minutes latter I was handed a rental agreement by another silent type who pointed to the door. He was a tall white guy so I think he was American, but I never saw him speak to anyone, including the weed smoking fellow clerks, so maybe he was a mute or possible an automaton from Europe. They have those now. I then headed through the garage to the rental car area where there was another mob of people waiting for their rental car to arrive.

The local attendant was a black guy and judging by his accent I deduced he was a local guy, rather than an automaton from the very southern Europe area. He realized that his company was screwing these people, so he tried to make up for it by being extra nice and apologetic, suggesting he had a soul and cared about his work. It turns out that the main delayed was they were out of car washers. That was the bottleneck in the system and he said it has been a problem for weeks.

Now, I could see the check in lane. I could see at least a half dozen Alamo workers there doing nothing as there were no cars to check in. Sunday morning is when lots of cars arrive, but Sunday afternoon is when the cars leave for the week. There were, of course, the crew of zombies at the rental counter. No where did I see anyone that would be in charge of anything. What I was experiencing was systemic break down due to a collapse of the smart fraction in the system.

On the return trip I got to the airport quite early. I had booked extra time in the trip back because of what I saw Friday. I was imagining the Alamo crew running TSA and me missing my flight because of a three hour line. Instead, the airport was weirdly quiet, even for a Sunday morning. Having extra time, I asked the Southwest person if I could change to an earlier flight. I had checked on my phone and saw a flight I could get on that arrived in Lagos much earlier than my current flight.

She silently took my ID and stared at the screen for an uncomfortably long time, which did not fill me with confidence. She then said the only thing she could do was put me on standby, so I said no and expected to get my ID back. Instead, she said to me that I was no longer on my original flight. After some back and forth, I learned that she had cancelled my original flight first and then tried to book me on the new flight, without bothering to tell me what she was doing.

What I realized was the woman was not malicious or disinterested, but that she was simply too stupid to perform her job. She was clearly panicked by what she had done as she now had an angry customer in front of her. Since I have a million points with Southwest and belong to their club, I called customer service while standing in front of the woman and explained the deal. They had me hand my phone to the woman who then followed instructions to fix my flight.

I was now booked on the earlier flight and pre-boarded. Because I only use Southwest for domestic travel, I always get the A-group and usually top-10. On this flight I had been checked in as A1, so I guess they thought bumping me up to pre-board was the required compensation for the screwup. I could not help but notice that they then announced that the flight was overbooked and one person would be asked to give up his seat in exchange for a $500 credit.

In Lagos, I learned that my bag had been sent on a separate journey. I expected this given what had happened at the other end. I went to the baggage claim office and was greeted by a local girl listening to very loud hip-hop music. She silently tapped on the screen for twenty minutes and out popped a single sheet of paper with about fifty words of original content. That is right. She needed twenty minutes of concentration to enter my information into the system.

Like everywhere in the system, the thing I noticed was not the low quality of human capital at the front end. That has not changed all that much. Most frontline jobs at an airport are filled with people who show up. The real issue was a near total lack of supervision all along the way. There was no one riding heard on these people to make sure they avoided error. The 21st century has begun and the evolutionary process has changed and is going in the opposite direction.

If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa@******************ns.com.