Lost luggage and missing arms

The lady was upset, anybody could see that. I was standing behind her at the airport in Bloomington, Ill., as she complained and gesticulated angrily. The airline, Airtran Airways, she loudly exclaimed for all to hear, had lost her luggage and she was irate. The young lady behind the counter tried to say how sorry she was. “There’s no excuse!” the luggage-less lady shouted.

“I know, you’re right,” said the Airtran lady. “But I can assure you that the luggage will likely be on the next flight and, wherever you are, we’ll get it to you.”

But the complainant would have none of that. She still loudly berated the poor woman behind the counter and proclaimed how she would never fly the airline again.

In all the time I have flown over the years, my luggage has not arrived with me at the destination twice. The first was when I was on an important job interview in Colorado nearly three decades ago. The last time was a couple of years ago when I flew to Utah for a funeral.

At neither event does one not want to have one’s best wardrobe. But, the airlines delivered the luggage within 12 hours and no harm was done. I got the job and I was properly dressed for the funeral.

The amazing thing to me is that anyone’s luggage gets where it is supposed to go. On a recent broadcast of “Dirty Jobs,” host Mike Rowe explored the world of baggage handlers at a major airport. After viewing that segment, I wondered how anything got to the destination on time. It is an incredibly complex operation.

In the last two years, I have made around 30 flights and all my luggage arrived on time. I suspect that most people have similar experiences.

Some people¸ however, have very little capacity in their lives for dealing with stress. The lady with the delayed luggage became angry, swore, shouted, embarrassed the woman behind the counter, made all the other passengers in the ticket line uncomfortable — for what? It didn’t get her luggage to her one minute earlier. No amount of bluster or bullying would change the fact that her baggage was somewhere else.

There are a great many people out there who seem to be on a short fuse. A father and his two sons were recently gunned down by someone experiencing road rage. Now, if this man is found guilty, he will lose either his life or his freedom because he was beside himself over a relatively minor incident, and three people died.

A police officer once told the story of a disgruntled football fan who became upset when his professional football team lost a game. Apparently, when the opposing team won, the man kicked in his TV, began shouting, grabbed a gun and went outside his home and fired bullets into the sky. Predictably, the police arrived and the situated escalated.

The encounter ended when the man was shot by police after he pointed the gun in their direction. The round hit him in the elbow and the man lost his lower arm. The officer shook his head as he said, “There’s a man walking around town without a lower arm because his team lost a football game.” The game, of course, was not the problem. The man’s response to the situation was.

Lost luggage, being cut off in traffic, or watching a team lose a football game is not the end of the world. People need to get a grip. The only loser in the encounter at the airport was the rude woman who lost her cool because her baggage was going to be delayed two hours.

After she stomped out, the other travelers offered their sympathies to the Airtran employee. For her part, she was very gracious and never said an ill word about the outraged passenger.

Later, I went outside and there was the lady still upset and shouting about her luggage to a relative who had arrived to pick her up. “Well,” I thought, “thank God she doesn’t have a gun. At least she still has her lower arm.”