Was Kafka an Aeroplan member?

Yes, it's time for another screed about the marvels of air travel in Canada. Yet again I find myself in Vancouver, busily not enjoying the scenery or the (not quite fabulous) weather.

My return flight to Toronto was delayed by a couple of hours, so I figured I'd make the best of my down time by booking a trip for my summer holiday, using my Aeroplan points. I've done enough traveling over the years that I have a decent number of miles saved up. (for those of you who were raised post-Imperial system, "miles" are those things that we used to use before kilometres came along. Don't ask me why Aeroplan still uses 'em.)

First off, the new and improved Aeroplan now requires vastly more miles for reward travel than it used to. Back in the early days, there were only a specific number of seats per flight that were available for Aerooplan reward travel. A little while ago Aeroplan made a lot of noise about removing that particular restriction. "Every seat can be a reward seat", they crowed.

Not so fast, Sparky. Although it's true that you can now use your miles to get any seat, the number of miles you need to get said seat can often be ridiculous. Air Canada may have simplified its fare structure when it comes to using hard currency, but the byzantine fare rules didn't actually vanish - they've just been applied to reward seats. So a trip that used to cost just 25 000 miles can now cost 150 000 or even more.

*fume*

But wait: it gets better. After I found an itinerary that wasn't going to involve me shedding my entire stock of hard-earned reward miles, I booked it online. I entered all the flight information, dates, name, address, phone numbers, astrological sign, favourite colour and e-mail address. Then I clicked "submit". (There should be doctoral theses written on the appropriateness of that particular verb in this context.)

The highly sophisticated and no doubt ridiculously expensive reservation system essentially laughed at me. "Error", it said, giving an error code and recommending I call tech support to get past this little hiccup.

Being generally the resourceful type, I changed Web browsers and tried again. Same info; same result. Undeterred, I called up the Aeroplan customer service line (yes, as a matter of fact I do think that's a contradiction in terms) to talk to a human being. I went through the itinerary with her, giving all the required information yet again. She was entering the very same information into the very same database I had been using. Then, just as she was about to click "submit", she mentioned casually that it was going to cost me an extra thirty bucks. The explanation was that there is a mandatory fee for booking reward travel through the telephone system.

My response was something along the lines of "Hulk ANGRY". Why fortheluvva Mike would I go through the rigmarole of booking online, be unsuccessful twice, and then have to pay for the privilege of having someone else enter the same info into the same system, with very possibly the same result? The by-now-very-put-upon agent offered to transfer me to tech support.

*fume some more*

Sooooooooo... another pleasant chat, this time with the customer service guy. (A friend of mine in the IT business calls his customer service reps "monkeys". Until today I thought that was unfair.) It turns out that the error code indicated that my e-mail address was "wrong".

Huh? Wrong? The e-mail address I've been using for something like a dozen years? Why, yes, said the (remember, I didn't coin this term) monkey. "Your e-mail address has only two characters before the @. Our system needs at least three."

That's when I think everyone in the lounge heard all the blood vessels in my head explode at the same time.

The system was expecting more characters? I was speechless. Quoth the monkey: "You could always get another e-mail address". It's funny, but maybe I should quit expecting service from, you know, customer service.

Waving without due care and attention

The province of Ontario is considering a ban on cellphones while driving. Other provinces - Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia and Quebec - have already instituted a ban, and even Alberta is considering it.

That's a good thing. I can't tell you how many people I see running red lights, blowing off stop signs, passing or changing lanes unsafely, all because they're too busy yammering. Being a pedestrian in good ol' Muddy York can be a real challenge at times.

Why am I blogging about this?

Today I had a moment of true puzzlement. On my way home from work I walk in front of a large office building. The underground parkade there is so busy at peak times that the place could really use a traffic light outside to help manage the volume of vehicles coming out. In the absence of a stoplight, there's a paid-duty policeman who is there to direct traffic. He holds off oncoming traffic on Front Street so that people can get in or out of the parkade; he also protects the pedestrians from getting run over by the drivers. All that is as it should be.

Until today. Here's the fine, upstanding officer of the forces of order, merrily directing rush-hour traffic... and talking on his cellphone at the same time.

Let's recap. The province wants to stop people from using their cellphones while they're driving. Why? Because the attention they're paying to their conversations is attention they're not paying to driving safely (cf. my post re cabbies and cellphones). They're distracted, and being distracted is bad.

Am I to infer from this that it's okay, though, for a police officer to be distracted while coordinating the movements of eight or ten vehicles at once?

Oh, and before you ask: the conversation wasn't a life-and-death matter, either. I think I heard something about groceries.