Anybody see my bag?

Tuesday has arrived, as usual. Anything new? Well, I did run across an airline new item yesterday, “An estimated 30 million bags were temporarily lost by airlines in 2005, and 200,000 of those bags were never reunited with their owners, according to an industry report released Monday.” I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I mentally say “goodbye” to my luggage when I hand it over and begin making plans on how I will survive without it. And when it does show up again at my destination, I’m excited! So much better than that feeling of despair as you watch an empty carousel slow and then come to a halt. Your bag? Gone.

Memory: When I was working on the McCarran Airport (Las Vegas) remodel, I would often be behind the wall that hides the inner workings of the bag transport system. It’s a maze of roller coaster-like moving belts with a complex system of gates that feed the bags onto various paths. When you see your bag move slowly through that curtain, you assume that the trip to the plane is sedate and dignified. Not so; as soon as it disappears from your view the speed increases and bags begin to fly…long before they are on the plane. At critical bends in the machinery, I would often have to step up and over large piles of bags that had been ejected from the process.

We’re having newspaper troubles once again. And I’m wondering if we should continue the subscription. The Bee had been delivered early ever since we began our subscription; arriving before 5:30 each and every day. Something changed a few weeks ago and now it’s close to 7 before we see it. By 7, I can read all of the news I want on-line.

Newspapers are having a tough time in today’s market and so you would think that they would want to make certain that the “point of contact” with the customer would be a pleasant one. That’s where their business begins…and ends. I shouldn’t have to think about my subscription…that should be their number one priority; getting the newspaper into my hands as soon as possible. And I’m the customer they don’t want to lose. I have been a newspaper reader since the age of nine, reading the Los Angeles Daily News in the mornings (sharing it with my parents) and reading the Herald Examiner in the afternoons. And I have been reading the Bee since 1988.