A Love Letter to EasyJet
They should be called 'DifficultJet' instead (ha ha ha I'm so funny where's my spot on Live at the Apollo already?)
I am an impatient person. Waiting is irritating, having nothing to do is irritating, and nothing bores me more than sitting around a setting like an airport (can we also take a moment to slag off how outrageously unfair it is that Bristol airport only allows for TWO HOURS free Wi-Fi?) with no one to talk to and only a Closer magazine to read.
I am writing this because last year, as I'm sure anyone who's ever spoken to me will know, I had a flight from Nice to Newcastle that was cancelled. Full-on cancelled, my first ever holiday as an independent adult and literally the worst thing that could have happened happened, leaving me stranded in France and delaying my time of making it home by 53 hours. Cue myself and my friend Charlotte queuing at EasyJet customer services for FIVE BLOODY HOURS while the unbelievably rude French staff - and there were only two of them to deal with about 400 people, maybe more - offered us but a mere 50% off a stale baguette 4 hours into the wait. Honestly, that bread was so chewy it's a wonder we didn't choke. And there were elderly people standing for those five hours, too. There was nothing to sit on but the floor, which is possible for someone like me, but for the elderly it's outrageous. AND the nearest socket was ages away, and I had to grovel with the nice people behind me to borrow their adapter.
As you can imagine, a five-hour queue doesn't move very fast. Plus, the feeling that you're stranded in a foreign country doesn't really do anything positive for your state of mind. It got so bad that at one point, an angry bloke from one of the three cancelled flights charged over to an empty work desk and, in a violent rage, hurled a computer at the electronic screen behind it. Carnage. Not only that, but the EasyJet spokesperson who explained the delay to us all got into a shouting match with a Spanish lady who spoke neither English nor French. "Can you learn a language in a minute? No! Neither can I!" he shouted in her face. He was LUCKY she couldn't understand him. And, like the emotionally stable person I am, I may have cried through the ordeal. But anyway...
I'm currently living in Bristol, land of Skins and Wallace and Gromit, doing a publishing course/internship. Hire me, pls. The course is great, the people are lovely, but it's not just home. Missing home, and more importantly the people there, I decided that a 5 hour train journey from Bristol Temple Meads to Newcastle wasn't for me. So I booked a flight instead.
With EasyJet. Can you see where this is going?
Little me, youthful and about to get on a plane alone for the first time, arrived at the airport, excited to go on an adventure. After being rather waspishly told by an employee of EasyJet that no, people with cabin bags don't need to queue in bag drop, and having a brand-new can of dry shampoo taken away from me (and silly me! I should have remembered 200ml is too much liquid) by airport security, I thought, hey-ho, Lucy, fear not! You're still going to go home and see your mum and your boyfriend and have a jolly good weekend.
So you can imagine the mild irritation (ok, as a drama queen I will admit it was fiery rage) to discover that the flight was delayed by an hour. Just an hour, though. That's ok. That's doable. That's just swell. Just going to be a little bored. I'll have my tea at Burger King, whose chicken nuggets are pitiful in comparison to McDonald's, and hang about for longer than I planned to.
And the longer I waited, the closer I got to that blessed boarding time, the further back the delay stretched. And then, when I checked the update, I was both horrified and dismayed to see that the flight had gone from being delayed by one hour to two and a half. I tried desperately to fill the time by wondering round duty free and the various shops. But there's only so long you can spend looking at bikinis you can't fit into and overpriced sunglasses before you start to get bored. I tried napping the time away, but being the school holidays, the airport was packed with kids.
But it's ok, because it was revealed to me on the tinny tannoy system that I was entitled to a free beverage - something they told me 45 minutes after paying an extortionate £2.50 for a cup of tea. How generous of them. A free drink. Never mind the two and a half hours with my loved ones that I've lost. And, I couldn't even claim money back on this cup of overly watery tea, as the free beverage deal did not apply to that particular cafe.
I am sat now in said cafe on my laptop, having run out of the two hours free Wi-Fi on my phone, typing in a blind rage as I drink my frankly disgusting cup of tea. Allegedly the plane is going to take off in an hour, but after my experience last year, I'm just (im)patiently waiting for that little announcement that the flight is going to be bloody cancelled, and I'm going to have to pay another £8 for the shuttle bus back into Bristol city centre. Will I make it? Who knows? Stay tuned in and find out (because the world WILL find out if I have any more delays to my sorely-needed trip home).
I am an impatient person. Waiting is irritating, having nothing to do is irritating, and nothing bores me more than sitting around a setting like an airport (can we also take a moment to slag off how outrageously unfair it is that Bristol airport only allows for TWO HOURS free Wi-Fi?) with no one to talk to and only a Closer magazine to read.
I am writing this because last year, as I'm sure anyone who's ever spoken to me will know, I had a flight from Nice to Newcastle that was cancelled. Full-on cancelled, my first ever holiday as an independent adult and literally the worst thing that could have happened happened, leaving me stranded in France and delaying my time of making it home by 53 hours. Cue myself and my friend Charlotte queuing at EasyJet customer services for FIVE BLOODY HOURS while the unbelievably rude French staff - and there were only two of them to deal with about 400 people, maybe more - offered us but a mere 50% off a stale baguette 4 hours into the wait. Honestly, that bread was so chewy it's a wonder we didn't choke. And there were elderly people standing for those five hours, too. There was nothing to sit on but the floor, which is possible for someone like me, but for the elderly it's outrageous. AND the nearest socket was ages away, and I had to grovel with the nice people behind me to borrow their adapter.
As you can imagine, a five-hour queue doesn't move very fast. Plus, the feeling that you're stranded in a foreign country doesn't really do anything positive for your state of mind. It got so bad that at one point, an angry bloke from one of the three cancelled flights charged over to an empty work desk and, in a violent rage, hurled a computer at the electronic screen behind it. Carnage. Not only that, but the EasyJet spokesperson who explained the delay to us all got into a shouting match with a Spanish lady who spoke neither English nor French. "Can you learn a language in a minute? No! Neither can I!" he shouted in her face. He was LUCKY she couldn't understand him. And, like the emotionally stable person I am, I may have cried through the ordeal. But anyway...
I'm currently living in Bristol, land of Skins and Wallace and Gromit, doing a publishing course/internship. Hire me, pls. The course is great, the people are lovely, but it's not just home. Missing home, and more importantly the people there, I decided that a 5 hour train journey from Bristol Temple Meads to Newcastle wasn't for me. So I booked a flight instead.
With EasyJet. Can you see where this is going?
Little me, youthful and about to get on a plane alone for the first time, arrived at the airport, excited to go on an adventure. After being rather waspishly told by an employee of EasyJet that no, people with cabin bags don't need to queue in bag drop, and having a brand-new can of dry shampoo taken away from me (and silly me! I should have remembered 200ml is too much liquid) by airport security, I thought, hey-ho, Lucy, fear not! You're still going to go home and see your mum and your boyfriend and have a jolly good weekend.
So you can imagine the mild irritation (ok, as a drama queen I will admit it was fiery rage) to discover that the flight was delayed by an hour. Just an hour, though. That's ok. That's doable. That's just swell. Just going to be a little bored. I'll have my tea at Burger King, whose chicken nuggets are pitiful in comparison to McDonald's, and hang about for longer than I planned to.
And the longer I waited, the closer I got to that blessed boarding time, the further back the delay stretched. And then, when I checked the update, I was both horrified and dismayed to see that the flight had gone from being delayed by one hour to two and a half. I tried desperately to fill the time by wondering round duty free and the various shops. But there's only so long you can spend looking at bikinis you can't fit into and overpriced sunglasses before you start to get bored. I tried napping the time away, but being the school holidays, the airport was packed with kids.
But it's ok, because it was revealed to me on the tinny tannoy system that I was entitled to a free beverage - something they told me 45 minutes after paying an extortionate £2.50 for a cup of tea. How generous of them. A free drink. Never mind the two and a half hours with my loved ones that I've lost. And, I couldn't even claim money back on this cup of overly watery tea, as the free beverage deal did not apply to that particular cafe.
I am sat now in said cafe on my laptop, having run out of the two hours free Wi-Fi on my phone, typing in a blind rage as I drink my frankly disgusting cup of tea. Allegedly the plane is going to take off in an hour, but after my experience last year, I'm just (im)patiently waiting for that little announcement that the flight is going to be bloody cancelled, and I'm going to have to pay another £8 for the shuttle bus back into Bristol city centre. Will I make it? Who knows? Stay tuned in and find out (because the world WILL find out if I have any more delays to my sorely-needed trip home).
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