Oh dear, I thought to myself as the third angry traveler left the desk, this is going to be a long day. American Airlines had booked seventeen passengers on a New York—Brussels—Madrid flight, and everyone had missed their connection in Brussels. As often as this happens, its always so unpleasant having to calm everyone down and somehow convince them that everything is fine. A lot of times, customers get way too personal in some desperate bid to make me sympathetic enough to just magically conjure up their luggage. Believe me, if I could do that, I would in a second just to spare everyone the pissy quasi-polite whining in broken Spanish. One of those days.
That new woman, Pilar, really struck out with the bitchy customers today; just her luck, I suppose, since the woman was as daft as an acorn. Unfortunately for her, it sounded like these two were as prickly as cactuses. Feeling poetic today, Alicia? I decided to pretend to run some data and listen in on what was going on. Pilar just wasn’t ready to be manning the service desk, and she’d probably freak out and make me take care of everything anyway.
This couple seemed a bit strange from the start—even though I could only see them from the neck up, they were wearing the oddest hats I had seen in a while. They were made of cheap nylon, and the brim sagged like a flimsy cloth; zippers ran above their foreheads and seemed to contain bulges in what looked like pockets. He wore blue, and she wore pink. Those hats alone screamed tourist, but I was surprised when the boy spoke—he had a relative eloquence to his questions and comments. Pilar seemed confused; I was about to step in, but the couple seemed to buy her explanation and left for carrousel eleven. A weepy French woman stepped up to my window, and I quickly forgot about them.
Just as the French woman began crying again, I noticed something odd over at carrousel eleven: the couple from earlier was taking turns posing and taking pictures of themselves. Even from fifty meters away, I couldn’t help but notice their bizarre outfits. The boy in blue was wearing a ridiculously tight blue t-shirt and garish multi-colored sneakers; the girl’s outfit, however, was the icing on the cake—a loose-fitting hot pink jumpsuit, purple plastic Mardi-Gras beads, and sneakers identical to those of her companion, except they were trimmed in bright pink. Their hats now seemed infinitely stranger in combination with their color-coordinated costumes. From the way they were alternately prancing around and standing stoically at the baggage carrousel, they seemed both humorously aware and completely oblivious to their appearance.
I’ve been working the customer service desk for a few years now, but I can’t say I’ve witnessed a sight quite like that in a while. The boy in blue seemed especially erratic, as he seemed to be both laughing and cursing at their situation. When they began to approach the desk again, I heard him screaming expletives in English, hard and blunt like an American. As Pink Freak and Blue Monster came up to my window, I braced myself for an incomprehensible line of questioning.
“Hello, we’d like to make a reclamation for our suitcases,” stated Blue Monster in a surprisingly calm tone and nearly perfect castellano. His associate Pink Freak stood silently next to him, fingering her purple beads like a rosary. They gentle-tapped their fingers on the counter as I mechanically explained the process of reclamation, all the while trying to figure out what on earth had brought them here, how old they were and, most importantly, if they should have been traveling alone. I brought out the luggage identification chart, and Blue Monster described his suitcase: “dark green, hard-backed, with wheels and a retractable handle.” Looking to Pink Freak for the description of her luggage, she simply stared at the sheet, almost seeming terrified of my question. Slowly, she pointed at a few pictures, wordless all the while: “blue, soft, bag.” After a brief exchange of contact information, they left without making the outrageous, crazed statements I had been anticipating since I saw them playing around the baggage carrousel. As they walked away, I heard Blue Monster scream out, “Fuck, are you fucking kidding me. This is bullshit, fucking bullshit. Fuck.” Shouting out his string of profanities as if nobody but he and Pink Freak understood English. American conceit, all too commonplace. Oddly enough, this was the most typical aspect of my interactions with that strange, strange couple. I wonder if they’ll make it through the next month.
