Ground Control to Major Dumbass

I am a planner.

I enjoy having a good solid plan that I can work all the nitty-gritty details out early on in the process. This allows me to be able to sit back and relax while events can unfold in the order in which they were supposed to, right?

...Wrong.

Last I checked, I did not make any room in my schedule for a flight cancellation, but it seems to have happened anyway. Thus affirming that a fool-proof plan is a figment of imagination and is not possible to create.

Perhaps this is irony, pulling a fast one on me. After all, I have been complaining about how much I do not want to leave Sweden for the past couple of weeks. Not to mention the mess I was yesterday, crying in the arms of my friend and telling him that I wish so badly that I could stay and live here in Sweden. Yeah, yeah... careful what you wish for, I know.

I received the unsatisfactory news about an hour ago via email. It said the following:

"PLEASE CONTACT STA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AS YOUR RETURN FLIGHT HAS BEEN CANCELLED AND WE NEED TO DICUSS OPTIONS FOR REACCOMIDATION. PLEASE CALL AT 1-800-777-0112.

THANK YOU"

All in caps. For the record, if you just canceled a flight I spent half a year working to get the money to pay for, I don't want to feel like the email you send informing me of it is yelling at me. And on top of it, I feel like a travel booking agency should know how to spell the words "accommodation", "canceled", and "discuss".

Perhaps I am being one of those insufferably anal people by complaining about the email quality. I mean, it is just a job to whoever sent that email, and they probably don't give a crap how I feel about them using all caps. But it still really sucks to wake up to such crappy news. And perhaps I wouldn't be so upset if I only had the email to be upset about. But that is not all. Oh yes, there is more.

Immediately, I called the number given in the yelling email. I was greeted by the ever-so-friendly and over enthusiastic voice of a recording. "Thank you for calling STA Travel, your call is very important to us, blah blah blah. Now listen to this awesomely cheesy music we stole from a porn soundtrack and listen to the same three advertisements over and over again for the better half of an hour until we feel like talking to you."

Honestly, I kid you not when I say the better half of an hour. I sat there for a good ten or fifteen minutes before I decided that it was going to be a while. I sliced some cheese and tomato and made myself a sandwich for breakfast, I used the restroom, and I browsed around facebook for a while (because I'm cool like that). The recording played for so long, I began to recite along with the advertisements and predict every change in the music. Finally, the call went through and I got an answer.

You can imagine how relieved I was to hear the voice of the customer service representative, so you must realize how absolutely disappointed I was to find out that Customer Service was actually closed for the night and she was merely on night duty in case of emergency. It was ever so heart breaking.

And that leaves me in my present state. I am lying in bed, completely stressed out but utterly helpless. It is almost 10 in the morning here in Sweden, and almost 1 in Washington State. Customer service is not open for about six more hours.

I should get up soon and pack my bags and get everything ready to go, but I am in a bad mood and I don't feel like it at the moment. I must be on a bus that will take me to Stockholm at 5 this evening, so I don't feel like I need to start packing yet. So I shall lie here and fume for a while, then perhaps I can find it within myself to carry on with my duties.

I have no idea how I just composed such an elaborate portrayal of how awful my morning has been, but I suppose that is the power of being pissed off.

Until further notice, over and out Planet Earth.